Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-843_7j80.pdf
Page Number: 65

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

59 

Opinion of the Court 

proper-cause  requirement  for  several  reasons.    First,  the 
bare  existence  of  these  localized  restrictions  cannot  over-
come the overwhelming evidence of an otherwise enduring 
American tradition permitting public carry.   For starters, 
“[t]he  very  transitional  and  temporary  character  of  the
American [territorial] system” often “permitted legislative 
improvisations  which  might  not  have  been  tolerated  in  a 
permanent  setup.”    E.  Pomeroy,  The  Territories  and  the 
United  States  1861–1890,  p. 4  (1947).    These  territorial 
“legislative  improvisations,”  which  conflict  with  the  Na-
tion’s earlier approach to firearm regulation, are most un-
likely to reflect “the origins and continuing significance of 
the Second Amendment” and we do not consider them “in-
structive.”  Heller, 554 U. S., at 614. 

The exceptional nature of these western restrictions is all 
the more apparent when one considers the miniscule terri-
torial  populations  who  would  have  lived  under  them.    To 
put  that  point  into  perspective,  one  need  not  look  further
than the 1890 census.  Roughly 62 million people lived in 
the United States at that time.  Arizona, Idaho, New Mex-
ico, Oklahoma, and Wyoming combined to account for only
420,000 of those inhabitants—about two-thirds of 1% of the 
population.  See Dept. of Interior, Compendium of the Elev-
enth  Census:  1890,  Part  I.–Population  2  (1892).    Put 
simply, these western restrictions were irrelevant to more
than 99% of the American population.  We have already ex-
plained that we will not stake our interpretation of the Sec-
ond Amendment upon a law in effect in a single State, or a 
single  city,  “that  contradicts  the  overwhelming  weight  of
other evidence regarding the right to keep and bear arms”
in public for self-defense.  Heller, 554 U. S., at 632; see su-
pra, at 57–58.  Similarly, we will not stake our interpreta-
tion  on  a  handful  of  temporary  territorial  laws  that  were
enacted  nearly  a  century  after  the  Second  Amendment’s 
adoption,  governed  less  than  1%  of  the  American  popula-
tion,  and  also  “contradic[t]  the  overwhelming  weight”  of