If anything, it sounds like NRA's motion for divided argument to argue Due Process incorporation may well have saved the case.
I strongly disagree with this. This case is going to be decided on the briefs. Short of an abysmal performance, which Gura wasn't going to give, there is no way that the case was going to be lost at orals. Gura was perfectly capable of making the Due Process argument and I have full faith he would have made an excellent one. However, since he had one of the top Supreme Court Constitutional litigators in the country standing behind him to argue that point, there wasn't much need to waste a lot of time on it.
Gura's problem was that he never addressed the Justices' concerns about expansive interpretation of the P&I clause adequately. Instead he went "full-libertarian" and just said "It is in the Constitution and we should read it that way" - which is a great sentiment that I agree with; but plainly if that was the case, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
This is also the problem with Ilya Shapiro's argument (which is basically the same one Gura offered) - that by using an originalist understanding of the P&I clause, there were "clear signposts" that showed what those rights meant. The truth is that those signposts aren't that clear and a substantial number of both judges and Justices are not strict originalists. Those signposts can be whirled around like a Bugs Bunny cartoon and used to argue for all kinds of unenumerated rights. The Shapiro/Gura theory of why we shouldn't worry about Pandora's Box only works if all of the Justices/judges are originalists - and pretty clearly, they aren't.
Although I have to say it did bug me to see the Justices keep badgering Gura to name the unenumerated rights? Exactly what does the word "unenumerated" mean to them anyway? If it were possible to
enumerate them all, I imagine the Framers would have gotten around to that; thus the whole 10th Amendment thing.
As it was, I am glad Clements was around though. He definitely showed the experience of his previous 49 oral arguments in addressing the Court.
Feldman though, o my, that was awful to read. I can't imagine what it was like to hear it. Not that he was in a great position to begin with; but when one of the Justices who wrote the majority in Heller asks you "Isn't that what the losing side in Heller argued?", the correct answer is not "No! That is what Heller meant."