n Heller, and Scalia and his staff labored mightily to produce a long opinion (the majority opinion is almost 25,000 words long) that would convince, or perhaps just overwhelm, the doubters. The range of historical references in the majority opinion is breathtaking, but it is not evidence of disinterested historical inquiry. It is evidence of the ability of well-staffed courts to produce snow jobs. This is strikingly shown by the lengthy discussion of the history of interpretation of the Second Amendment. Scalia quotes a number of statements to the effect that the amendment guarantees a personal right to possess guns--but they are statements by lawyers or other advocates, including legislators and judges and law professors all tendentiously dabbling in history, rather than by disinterested historians: more law-office history, in other words. Sanford Levinson, a distinguished constitutional law professor, has candidly acknowledged that the most important reason for his support of a constitutional right of private possession of guns is that opposition to this right is harmful to the electoral prospects of the Democratic Party. The statements that the majority opinion cited had little traction before Heller. For more than two centuries, the "right" to private possession of guns, supposedly created by the Second Amendment, had lain dormant. Constitutional rights often lie dormant, spectral subjects of theoretical speculation, until some change in the social environment creates a demand for their vivification and enforcement. But nothing has changed in the social environment to justify giving the Second Amendment a new life discontinuous with its old one: a new wine in a decidedly old wineskin. There is no greater urgency about allowing people to possess guns for self-defense or defense of property today than there was thirty years ago, when the prevalence of violent crime was greater, or for that matter one hundred years ago. Only the membership of the Supreme Court has changed.
