David Kopel on the History of Public Carrying of FirearmsMichael Ramsey

At Volokh Conspiracy, David Kopel describes a brief on behalf of firearms historians filed in the D.C. Circuit case Wrenn v. District of Columbia (a challenge to D.C.'s restrictions on public carry).  Key paragraph:

In the American colonies, nobody appears to have thought that they could not carry arms because of a 1328 English statute [the Statute of Northhampton, which is said to have restricted public carry]. Rather, the colonies mandated gun carrying in certain situations, such as when traveling or when going to church. To the extent that a few early states (and later, D.C.) enacted statutes expressing common law restrictions on arms carrying, the statutes (like the common law) only applied when a person did so “in terror of the country.” (D.C. 1818 statute; similar language in the states). In the colonial period, and in the first 37 years of independence, there were no restrictions on concealed carry. Several states enacted concealed carry bans thereafter, but of course these did not limit open carry. Moreover, our first “four Presidents openly carried firearms.” The notion that they, or anyone else, thought Americans were prohibited from doing so by a 1328 English statute is implausible.