“Yep, it’s been 70 years since the Supreme Court has directly ruled on the meaning of the 2nd amendment.”
And the last time they did it, there wasn’t even an opposing lawyer, and the case appeared to be fast-tracked to the Supremes for the purpose of validating the Gun National Firearms Act of 1934.
And the Supremes actually partially validated the 2nd Amendment by saying that a short-barrelled shotgun was not protected by the 2nd Amendment, _only_ because it wasn’t militarily useful, and not used by military/police at the time. Thus, they indirectly ruled that militarily useful firearms were protected.
Another interesting fact of the ‘34 NFA is that the Feds tried to claim it was not a gun control act at all, but rather a revenue mesure, since it did not actually ban anything, and instead imposed a tax on these items. The NFA is in the Internet Revenue Code.
It wasn’t until the ‘68 Gun Control Act that the Feds abandoned the pretense that they weren’t trying to regulate guns.
The key thing to remember when reading this brief is that the focus is on a total categorical ban, coupled with a total practical prohibition on use - with absolutely no way to legally engage in the most reasonable of actions (self-defense at home). This brief creates several barriers to avoid getting sucked into tangential red-herring arguments that are outside the very narrow scope of this case.
No "appearance" about it. The government, that is the FDR administration, appealed directly to the Supreme Court, without bothering with the appropriate Court of Appeals. (Which I think would have been the 8th. It would be today anyway).
Actually they did not rule that such a shotgun was not protected. Rather they ruled that neither they, nor the original district court, could "take judicial notice" that it was militarily useful. They established "The Test" but didn't actually apply it to short barreled shotguns. They sent the case back to the district court for further proceeding, where the rule would be applied. Unfortunately those proceedings never took place. Miller was dead, and Layton copped a plea in return for probation.