Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-843_7j80.pdf
Page Number: 47

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

41 

Opinion of the Court 

history in half a Colony roughly a century before the found-
ing sheds little light on how to properly interpret the Sec-
ond Amendment. 

Respondents next direct our attention to three late-18th-
century and early-19th-century statutes, but each parallels
the colonial statutes already discussed.  One 1786 Virginia 
statute provided that “no man, great nor small, [shall] go
nor ride armed by night nor by day, in fairs or markets, or
in other places, in terror of the Country.”  Collection of All 
Such Acts of the General Assembly of Virginia ch. 21, p. 33 
(1794).14  A Massachusetts statute from 1795 commanded 
justices of the peace to arrest “all affrayers, rioters, disturb-
ers, or breakers of the peace, and such as shall ride or go
armed offensively, to the fear or terror of the good citizens 
of this Commonwealth.”  1795 Mass. Acts and Laws ch. 2, 
p. 436,  in  Laws  of  the  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts. 
And an 1801 Tennessee statute likewise required any per-
son who would “publicly ride or go armed to the terror of the 
people, or privately carry any dirk, large knife, pistol or any 
other dangerous weapon, to the fear or terror of any person”
to  post  a  surety;  otherwise,  his  continued  violation  of  the
law would be “punished as for a breach of the peace, or riot 
at common law.”  1801 Tenn. Acts pp. 260–261. 

A by-now-familiar thread runs through these three stat-
utes:  They  prohibit  bearing  arms  in  a  way  that  spreads 
“fear” or “terror” among the people.  As we have already ex-
plained, Chief Justice Holt in Sir John Knight’s Case inter-
preted  this  in  Terrorem  Populi  element  to  require  some-
thing more than merely carrying a firearm in public.  See 
supra,  at  34–35.    Respondents  give  us  no  reason  to  think
that the founding generation held a different view.  Thus, 
all told, in the century leading up to the Second Amendment 
—————— 

14 The Virginia statute all but codified the existing common law in this 
regard.  See G. Webb, The Office and Authority of a Justice of Peace 92 
(1736) (explaining how a constable “may take away Arms from such who 
ride, or go, offensively armed, in Terror of the People”).