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Page Number: 44.0

38  NEW YORK STATE RIFLE & PISTOL ASSN., INC. v. BRUEN 

Opinion of the Court 

go armed Offensively . . . by Night or by Day, in Fear or Af-
fray of Their Majesties Liege People.”  1692 Mass. Acts and 
Laws no. 6, pp. 11–12; see 1699 N. H. Acts and Laws ch. 1. 
Respondents and their amici contend that being “armed of-
fensively” meant bearing any offensive weapons, including 
firearms.  See Brief for Respondents 33.  In particular, re-
spondents’ amici argue that “ ‘offensive’ ” arms in the 1600s 
and 1700s were what Blackstone and others referred to as 
“ ‘dangerous or unusual weapons,’ ”  Brief for Professors of 
History and Law as Amici Curiae 7 (quoting 4 Blackstone,
Commentaries,  at  148–149),  a  category  that  they  say  in-
cluded  firearms,  see  also  post,  at  40–42  (BREYER,  J.,  dis-
senting).
  Respondents, their amici, and the dissent all misunder-
stand these statutes.  Far from banning the carrying of any
class of firearms, they merely codified the existing common-
law offense of bearing arms to terrorize the people, as had
the Statute of Northampton itself.  See supra, at 34–37.  For 
instance,  the  Massachusetts  statute  proscribed  “go[ing] 
armed Offensively . . . in Fear or Affray” of the people, indi-
cating  that  these  laws  were  modeled  after  the  Statute  of 
Northampton  to  the  extent  that  the  statute  would  have 
been  understood  to  limit  public  carry  in  the  late  1600s. 
Moreover, it makes very little sense to read these statutes 
as banning the public carry of all firearms just a few years
after Chief Justice Holt in Sir John Knight’s Case indicated 
that the English common law did not do so.

Regardless, even if respondents’ reading of these colonial 
statutes were correct, it would still do little to support re-
strictions on the public carry of handguns today.  At most, 
respondents can show that colonial legislatures sometimes
prohibited  the  carrying  of  “dangerous  and  unusual  weap-
ons”—a  fact  we  already  acknowledged  in  Heller.  See  554 
U. S., at 627.  Drawing from this historical tradition, we ex-
plained there that the Second Amendment protects only the
carrying of weapons that are those “in common use at the