Cite as: 575 U. S. ____ (2015) 3 Opinion of ALITO, J. has not defined the meaning of the term “threat” in §875(c), but in construing the same term in a related statute, the Court distinguished a “true ‘threat’ ” from facetious or hyperbolic remarks. Watts v. United States, 394 U. S. 705, 708 (1969) (per curiam). In my view, the term “threat” in §875(c) can fairly be defined as a statement that is reasonably interpreted as “an expression of an intention to inflict evil, injury, or damage on another.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 2382 (1976). Conviction under §875(c) demands proof that the defendant’s transmission was in fact a threat, i.e., that it is reasonable to interpret the transmission as an expression of an intent to harm another. In addition, it must be shown that the defendant was at least reckless as to whether the transmission met that requirement. Why is recklessness enough? My analysis of the mens rea issue follows the same track as the Court’s, as far as it goes. I agree with the Court that we should presume that criminal statutes require some sort of mens rea for conviction. See ante, at 9–13. To be sure, this presumption marks a departure from the way in which we generally interpret statutes. We “ordinarily resist reading words or elements into a statute that do not appear on its face.” Bates v. United States, 522 U. S. 23, 29 (1997). But this step is justified by a well-established pattern in our criminal laws. “For several centuries (at least since 1600) the different common law crimes have been so defined as to require, for guilt, that the defendant’s acts or omissions be accompanied by one or more of the various types of fault (intention, knowledge, recklessness or—more rarely— negligence).” 1 W. LaFave, Substantive Criminal Law §5.5, p. 381 (2003). Based on these “background rules of the common law, in which the requirement of some mens rea for a crime is firmly embedded,” we require “some indication of congressional intent, express or implied, . . . to dispense with mens rea as an element of a crime.”