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Notes -
This argument conclusively fell through about 1860. One population in a group of states decided that the other population in a different group of states was not allowed to have the laws their electorates broadly supported, so they formed a massive mob and... well, you know the rest.
The compromise (if you can call it that), hashed out as soon the average judge sitting on the Supreme Court had no living memory of that event (they would have been unlikely to have even been born to parents who had participated in it, and even if they did those parents would all have been dead by then), was formalizing this new way. (They would then proceed to give the Federal government everything it wanted- from "anti-war speech is like shouting fire in a crowded theater" to "growing your own crops is interstate commerce"- in the years to come.)
However, because this compromise is couched in the language of "enforcing the constitution", conservatives had a valid point in that incorporation should naturally include the whole thing (not just the parts progressive states like), and 2A happened to get incorporated just as the initial massive Federal government power grabs were passing out of living memory. That probably isn't a coincidence.
All that said, the steelman for incorporation is that it broadly limits how hard a society in a particular State is allowed to entrench its regional brand of corruption/bullshit if the balance of power tilts hard enough one way or the other (so one-party states like California, while powerful, aren't allowed to completely destroy the culture of everyone else unfortunate enough to live there by outright banning and confiscating them). In turn, it also serves as a way to keep State borders stable (i.e. not bisecting California into San Angeles and Greater Nevada) and it's done a good job of that so far.
1860?
Dred Scott happened in 1857...
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