I mean I think that incorporation has a clearer constitutional basis than heller, but I see your point.
It also doesn't help that the constitution is unpleasantly vague in many places. It is a legal document, the chief legal document in fact, and yet we are forced to define legality based not so much on the text but on the vibe of the text (and yes this is true even if you are a textualist!), because the text isn't precise about what it means.
>I mean I think that incorporation has a clearer constitutional basis than heller, but I see your point
I hold the opposite view as you can probably tell.
>It also doesn't help that the constitution is unpleasantly vague in many places.
I think the problem is people have a misconstrued understanding of the role of the federal government based on erroneous court decisions.
We are now in a situation where people think the federal government can do anything except what is banned in the Constitution. This is one of the reasons why some of the founders were opposed to the Bill of Rights. They knew this exact situation would happen. Instead of thinking the government is allowed to do what is granted to them (enumerated powers) people now think the government can do anything that is not banned.
The federal government is allowed to do 27 things and nothing more. The courts have consistently allowed the government to do more and more and interpreted things exactly opposite of what it says (Wickard v Filburn for example).
Another issue is some people look at other countries and assume the US federal government should be able to act in the same way. We see this all the time. We have people saying the US is the only developed country without X. The problem is X isn't supposed to be done by the federal government, you have to look at what the States do.
Sorry about rambling. Not sure if I fully responded to you.
It also doesn't help that the constitution is unpleasantly vague in many places. It is a legal document, the chief legal document in fact, and yet we are forced to define legality based not so much on the text but on the vibe of the text (and yes this is true even if you are a textualist!), because the text isn't precise about what it means.