I hear this expression, "heavily regulated", a lot from Americans but I never understand in context to what? Are you making comparisons to Canada, the EU, China

I hear this expression, "heavily regulated", a lot from Americans but I never understand in context to what? Are you making comparisons to Canada, the EU, China or other countries with different economic systems? Also, how do you further differentiate necessary regulation from overbearing regulation? Surely you aren't suggesting all regulation is inherently bad?