Against Terror, not Arms

Here is a useful post going back to 1328. I want to pull just that one thread of it for today:

Go back to 1328. The Statute of Northampton made it illegal to go armed in public “to terrify the King's subjects.”1 This wasn’t a gun-control law in the modern sense. It's actually the origin of a distinction courts are still arguing about today: the difference between carrying lawfully and carrying to menace. (We'll come back to this. It shows up by name in the Bruen decision, 700 years later.)

Here's the statute:

Item, it is enacted, that no man great nor small, of what condition soever he be, except the King's servants in his presence, and his ministers in executing of the King's precepts, or of their office, and such as be in their company assisting them, and also [upon a cry made for arms to keep the peace, and the same in such places where such acts happen,] be so hardy to come before the King's justices, or other of the King's ministers doing their office, with force and arms, nor bring no force in affray of the peace, nor to go nor ride armed by night nor by day, in fairs, markets, nor in the presence of the justices or other ministers, nor in no part elsewhere, upon pain to forfeit their armour to the King, and their bodies to prison at the King's pleasure.

As the Wikipedia article points out, this was originally written in Anglo-French, the language of the court. It was really written as 'ne de chivaucher ne de daler arme.'

Now here's what Bruen said about that.

    To begin, respondents and their amici point to several medieval English regulations from as early as 1285 that they say indicate a longstanding tradition of restricting the public carry of firearms. See 13 Edw. 1, 102. The most prominent is the 1328 Statute of Northampton (or Statute), passed shortly after Edward II was deposed by force of arms and his son, Edward III, took the throne of a kingdom where “tendency to turmoil and rebellion was everywhere apparent throughout the realm.”... At the time, “[b]ands of malefactors, knights as well as those of lesser degree, harried the country, committing assaults and murders,” prompted by a more general “spirit of insubordination” that led to a “decay in English national life.”...

 The Statute of Northampton was, in part, “a product of . . . the acute disorder that still plagued England.”... It provided that, with some exceptions, Englishmen could not “come before the King’s Justices, or other of the King’s Ministers doing their office, with force and arms, nor bring no force in affray of the peace, nor to go nor ride armed by night nor by day, in Fairs, Markets, nor in the presence of the Justices or other Ministers, nor in no part elsewhere, upon pain to forfeit their Armour to the King, and their Bodies to Prison at the King’s pleasure.”...

 Respondents argue that the prohibition on “rid[ing]” or “go[ing] . . . armed” was a sweeping restriction on public carry of self-defense weapons that would ultimately be adopted in Colonial America and justify onerous public-carry regulations. Notwithstanding the ink the parties spill over this provision, the Statute of Northampton—at least as it was understood during the Middle Ages—has little bearing on the Second Amendment adopted in 1791.....

 The Statute’s prohibition on going or riding “armed” obviously did not contemplate handguns, given they did not appear in Europe until about the mid-1500s.... Rather, it appears to have been centrally concerned with the wearing of armor....  

 The Statute’s apparent focus on armor and, perhaps,  weapons like launcegays makes sense given that armor and lances were generally worn or carried only when one intended to engage in lawful combat or—as most early violations of the Statute show—to breach the peace.... Contrast these arms with daggers. In the medieval period, “[a]lmost everyone carried a knife or a dagger in his belt.”... While these knives were used by knights in warfare, “[c]ivilians wore them for self-protection,” among other things. Ibid. Respondents point to no evidence suggesting the Statute applied to the smaller medieval weapons that strike us as most analogous to modern handguns.

I mention all this because North Carolina to this day has a law that exactly mirrors the 1328 statute's language. I saw a guy was charged with it locally just the other day. The caselaw here shows that the state courts consider the issue to the be terror, not the arms, and so much so that they've convicted people for 'going armed to the terror of the public' in the absence of arms. Arms in North Carolina are commonly lawfully carried, and require no permit except in the case of concealed arms (which are normally forbidden entirely, excepting only handguns for those with a permit). 

You see people carrying arms here all the time; I do myself, like the Medievals a knife in my case. That's not illegal. It's explicitly legal. What's not legal is to go armed for the purpose of terrifying the community. That part has exactly the sort of long heritage in law that the Bruen decision sets up as a legitimating condition for proposed legislation.