Scalia’s opinion in Heller openly and unapologetically violated those core convictions of the historian’s craft. He began with the presumption that the right to bear arms was a nearly unlimited individual right, assembled evidence to support that conclusion, and suppressed or dismissed evidence that did not. Nor did he attempt to conceal what he was doing. Indeed, he subsequently called attention to the intellectual agility and debater-like skills required to make his case. The problem that Scalia faced in Heller was that the preponderance of historical evidence went against his case, which
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