Thus the Constitution and the Bill of Rights only spell out rights that were thought to have always existed. The subtext to me (disagree as you like) is these rights although subject to some level of common consensus were considered to be a right that no one could deny. (government or individual)
One of the beliefs of the founders was that government units closer to the people would have more incentives to guard the rights of the people. They probably could not have imagined that a state, at the time, or a city, would have any desires to infringe on the people's right to keep and bear arms, as well as other natural or God given rights. That would have been a foreign concept to their way of thinking.
However, when talking about a central government, they were very concerned with power and the abuse of such power. Thus, they included many items in the Constitution which specifically spelled out areas where the newly formed central government could not use or abuse it's powers. The powers were to flow uphill from the people, to the states, to the federal government. Some of those powers were forbidden to be given up to government power, including the rights of "the people". Those were considered to be "inalienable", meaning they could not be ceded to government, as they existed outside of government. Those rights exist within the individual.
Governments were formed to protect, secure, and guard those rights. That is written in the Declaration of Independence. I believe that means all levels of government.
Thus, if we use a logical flow of thinking, how can any level of government infringe upon a natural right which that government has been given the duty to protect?
I believe while the constitution SPECIFICALLY put limits on the federal government power, it ASSUMED that there were rights which would always belong to the people and no government entity, operating under the Constitution, the Supreme Law of the Land, could trample upon those "inalienable" rights.
In my opinion, this line of thinking was recognized by our federal government at the time they penned and passed the 14th amendment. They were trying to state the fact more specifically in the Constitution that states and local governments could not have power over the peoples natural, God given rights, as power over those rights could not be ceded to governments of any form or at any level.
I'm no constitutional scholar, by any means. However, much of the Constitution was written so it could be understood by all Americans, provided they could read. It's not full of lawyerly legalese. That's my opinion and I'm stuck on it.