Was Sir John Knight's Gun Case Made Up?

Malcolm Gladwell says the Sir John Knight gun case used to read the Second Amendment is completely made up. The version courts like says Sir John Knight took guns to a church, raised hell, was tried, and was found innocent. Gladwell treats the acquittal as real. What the research overturns is the church story: Knight did not bring his guns into the church.

Courts want the historical antecedents of the Second Amendment, because the founders' thinking is supposed to explain the sentence they drafted. Sir John Knight is offered as a 17th century English case in which a man accused of carrying guns illegally was acquitted, and as proof of a rich history of defending gun rights. The citation runs back to Sir John Knight, 1786, and is used to claim that the Second Amendment drew on hundreds of years of precedent for carrying guns. Gladwell asked historians in England who study their own history, and they said the case had been completely misunderstood. Knight was not carrying a gun into the church. He thought a Catholic conspiracy was afoot, and he was delusional.

The case being pointed to was not about a right to carry guns at all.