This demonstrates just how little the SC knows about guns and war. The 12gauge was a highly effective weapon when on "search and destroy" in Vietnam.
They didn't rule that it had no military use, they just ruled that they couldn't take judicial notice that it did, and remanded the case back to a lower court.
No evidence can be introduced in a Supreme Court Appeal, they must work solely on the record of the case. There was no record in the case of any testimony or evidence presented that a sawed-off shotgun had military use.
The lawyer defending that guy in that late '30s case was an ignorant idiot. Had he done any research at all he would have found that shotguns had been used in trench warfare in WWI. even shortened ones.
If the present court made a ruling based upon that case, it would overturn the 1994 gun ban because some of that list were military styled arms.
The problem was that the appellant was dead and his attorney did not show up to make his case.
The government presented their case without rebuttal.
This demonstrates just how little the SC knows about guns and war. The 12gauge was a highly effective weapon when on "search and destroy" in Vietnam.
As it was in WW-I, which was before the SC made that ruling. However the court did not exactly rule that a short barreled shotgun has no military use, rather that the Federal District Court should not have ruled that possession of one is protected by the second amendment absent any evidence to that effect. That is that the lower court should not have taken judicial notice of such a fact. That's why they sent the case back down to that lower court for "further proceedings". Those proceeding would have constituted reinstatement of the charges, since the Judge had thrown them out on the basis that the National Firearms Act of '34 was in clear violation of the Second Amendment. What the court really was that keeping and bearing arms of not of military use-fullness is not protected by the second amendment. From Miller:
In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some reasonable re- lationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantee's the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.
Of course, as admitted by the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Cases virtually all weapons can find military use, especially when one considers the grill war/resistance scenario. The Cases decision came during WW-II, but only 3 1/2 years after the Miller shotgun decision. From the Cases decision:
Apparently, then, under the Second Amendment, the federal government can limit the keeping and bearing of arms by a single individual as well as by a group of individuals, but it cannot prohibit the possession or use of any weapon which has any reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia. However, we do not feet that the Supreme Court in this case was attempting to formulate a general rule applicable to all cases. The rule which it laid down was adequate to dispose of the case before it and that we think was as far as the Supreme Court intended to go. At any rate the rule of the Miller case, if intended to be comprehensive and complete would seem to be already outdated, in spite of the fact that it was formulated only three and a half years ago, because of the well known fact that in the so called "Commando Units" some sort of military use seems to have been found for almost any modern lethal weapon. In view of this, if the rule of the Miller case is general and complete, the result would follow that, under present day conditions, the federal government would be empowered only to regulate the possession or use of weapons such as a flintlock musket or a matchlock harquebus. But to hold that the Second Amendment limits the federal government to regulations concerning only weapons which can be classed as antiques or curiosities, -almost any other might bear some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia unit of the present day,-is in effect to hold that the limitation of the Second Amendment is absolute. Another objection to the rule of the Miller case as a full and general statement is that according to it Congress would be prevented by the Second Amendment from regulating the possession or use by private persons not present or prospective members of any military unit, of distinctly military arms, such as machine guns, trench mortars, anti-tank or anti-aircraft guns, even though under the circumstances surrounding such possession or use it would be inconceivable that a private person could have any legitimate reason for having such a weapon. It seems to us unlikely that the framers of the Amendment intended any such result.
As you can see however, the Cases Court was revolted by the Idea that the Second Amendment means what it so clearly says, or that the Supreme Court meant what it said such a short time before, but because Snr. Cases was a bad hombre, and because there was war on, no one seemed to really care.
Read more about the Miller case here
The judges in the SC that ruled on Miller had to be idiots, as the model 97 was used extensively in WWI in the trenches.