Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-843_7j80.pdf
Page Number: 41.0

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

35 

Opinion of the Court 

that the act of “go[ing] armed to terrify the King’s subjects”
was “a great offence at the common law” and that the Stat-
ute of Northampton “is but an affirmance of that law.”  3 
Mod.,  at  118,  87  Eng.  Rep.,  at  76  (first  emphasis  added). 
Thus, one’s conduct “will come within the Act,”—i.e., would 
terrify the King’s subjects—only “where the crime shall ap-
pear  to  be  malo  animo,”  1  Comb.,  at  39,  90  Eng.  Rep.,  at 
330, with evil intent or malice.  Knight was ultimately ac-
quitted by the jury.11 
—————— 
281, 87 Eng. Rep. 186 (K. B. 1690); King v. Lewellin, 1 Shower, K. B. 48, 
89 Eng. Rep. 440 (K. B. 1689); cf. King and Queen v. Alsop, 4 Mod. 49, 
50–51, 87 Eng. Rep. 256, 256–257 (K. B. 1691).  By the late 1700s, it was 
widely recognized that the 1541 statute was “obsolete.”  2 R. Burn, The 
Justice of the Peace, and Parish Officer 243, n. (11th ed. 1769); see also, 
e.g.,  The  Farmer’s  Lawyer  143  (1774)  (“entirely  obsolete”);  1  G.  Jacob, 
Game-Laws  II,  Law-Dictionary  (T.  Tomlins  ed.  1797);  2  R.  Burn,  The 
Justice of the Peace, and Parish Officer 409 (18th ed. 1797) (calling the
1541 statute “a matter more of curiosity than use”). 

In any event, lest one be tempted to put much evidentiary weight on 
the 1541 statute, it impeded not only public carry, but further made it 
unlawful  for  those  without  sufficient  means  to  “kepe  in  his  or  their 
houses” any “handgun.”  33 Hen. 8 c. 6, §1.  Of course, this kind of limi-
tation is inconsistent with Heller’s historical analysis regarding the Sec-
ond Amendment’s meaning at the founding and thereafter.  So, even if a 
severe restriction on keeping firearms in the home may have seemed ap-
propriate  in  the  mid-1500s,  it  was  not  incorporated  into  the  Second 
Amendment’s scope.  We see little reason why the parts of the 1541 stat-
ute that address public carry should not be understood similarly. 

We note also that even this otherwise restrictive 1541 statute, which 
generally prohibited shooting firearms in any city, exempted discharges
“for the defence of [one’s] p[er]son or house.”  §4.  Apparently, the para-
mount need for self-defense trumped the Crown’s interest in firearm sup-
pression even during the 16th century. 

11 The dissent discounts Sir John Knight’s Case, 3 Mod. 117, 87 Eng. 
Rep. 75, because it only “arguably” supports the view that an evil-intent
requirement attached to the Statute of Northampton by the late 1600s
and early 1700s.  See post, at 37.  But again, because the Second Amend-
ment’s  bare  text  covers  petitioners’  public  carry,  the  respondents  here 
shoulder the burden of demonstrating that New York’s proper-cause re-
quirement is consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and histori-
cal scope.  See supra, at 15.  To the extent there are multiple plausible