If the voters of a state passed a law banning all guns, the Supremes would say the state law is unconstitutional. Declaring a law unconstitutional is not "legislating from the bench". Such a decision may be "violating the will of the People", but the tyranny of the majority is not allowed to violate our rights.
If a state passed a law requiring you to do 10 jumping jacks before you could vote, with exceptions made for the handicapped, such a law would probably be found to be constitutional even though it does not achieve its stated goal of preventing voter fraud. The constitution does not forbid retards from enacting completely useless laws.
On some rare occasions, Congress will pass a law which is unconstitutional, but which can be modified so that is it constitutional. On those occasions, the Supremes will explain what tweaks should be made to make the law constitutional. If one wanted to be an asshole, one could call this "legislating from the bench", or one could take it for what it is, an expert suggestion. Their way of saying, "We understand what you are trying to achieve, and here is a better and constitutional way to do it."
The problem isn't the Supreme Court striking down Unconstitutional laws, the problem is them not striking down Unconstitutional laws.
As for legislating from the bench, three examples
- Roe V. Wade. Abortion isn't in the Constitution, they just made up a Constitutional right
- Gay marriage. Gays had access to marriage equally with straights. If you don't think that's fair, that's fine. The Constitutional way to change it was through the legislature
- Obamacare. OK, the penalty being an income tax while being a stretch can be defended. That healthcare exchanges and mandating the coverage we need is a tax is ridiculous. And Obamacare was written so that if any party of the law was struck down, the bill was null and void.
None of those are the scenario you addressed as legislating from the bench. These three are pure legislating from the bench
None of those are legislation at all. Despite the RWNJ claims.