And it certainly was never meant to be incorporated to states and localities -- in fact, the entire point of it was to give the states domain to regulate their own militia, firearms, etc. The amendment served the purpose of disallowing the federal government to control all arms, with the thought being states would call up and train their own militias. It had *nothing* to do with states or localities being powerless to ban guns. In fact, most cities at the time had strict gun bans -- a trend that continued out into the frontier.

The notion that the 2A was passed to give every person an unfettered individual right to own a gun is every bit as stupid and absurd as it sounds. The point was obvious -- stop the national government from taking all military power and subjugating the states (a concept that is now dated and obsolete too).