Finally, respondents point to the slight uptick in gun regulation during the late-19th century. As the Court suggested in Heller, however, late-19th-century evidence cannot provide much insight into the meaning of the Second Amendment when it contradicts earlier evidence. In addition, the vast majority of the statutes that respondents invoke come from the Western Territories. The bare existence of these localized restrictions cannot overcome the overwhelming evidence of an otherwise enduring American tradition permitting public carry. See Heller, 554 U. S., at 614. Moreover, these territorial laws were rarely subject to judicial scrutiny, and absent any evidence explaining why these unprecedented prohibitions on all public carry were understood to comport with the Second Amendment, they do little to inform “the origins and continuing significance of the Amendment.” Ibid.; see also The Federalist No. 37, p. 229.
A potential sad irony of this decision is that it may create a “tail that wags the dog” scenario. That is to say, a drastic uptick in the number of people publicly carrying firearms may lead to an “ordinary self defense need” for everyone to carry a firearm. Put another way, an uptick in public gun violence will make it more reasonable and common for people who would otherwise have no interest in carrying a firearm to carry one.