Posted on 05/24/2008 12:45:08 AM PDT by neverdem
THE PECULIAR STORY OF UNITED STATES V. MILLER PDF link of a very interesting story in the war on guns
UNITED STATES v. MILLER, 307 U.S. 174 (1939) 6 PDF pages of the decision, a rather empty vessel, which was partly justified on the precedents established by cases using the Harrison Act, the first, or one of the first, war on drugs act.
War And Decision: Samizdat History
The Death of Conservatism Is Greatly Exaggerated
From time to time, I’ll ping on noteworthy articles about politics, foreign and military affairs. FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
ping for later
—bflr—
Now there's one articulate barrister
What I DO get is that SCOTUS said that a sawed off shotgun was not a normal firearm used by 'the militia' so it wasn't protected by the 2A - ergo all 'Assault Weapon' bans ARE Unconstitutional as we should have 'common weapons' used BY the military..
'A body of citizens enrolled for military discipline.' And further, that ordinarily when called for service these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time.
Plus it's already established law (starry decide us)(/s) that 'The Militia' is not the State National Guard. So here's my $200 (or whatever it is now) for the transfer stamp, now where's my 'machine gun' :-)
And please no M-16A2 or variant. Take that wimpy caliber and 3 round burst and shove it. An AR-10 for me please.
Unless the AR-10 is select-fire or full auto, you don’t need a tax stamp.
Comment# 2's distribution is the best I usually do on this forum. I found it in a strange way. I was searching on Yahoo News for gun control stories. This story from late January, early February was number 19 or 20. It makes no sense to me chronologically.
However, it makes sense if it was linked that much. I read a story, in the NY Times OpEds IIRC, that said something to that effect is the way Google ranks the links it finds when doing a search.
What's seldom mentioned is the bottom line of U.S. v. Miller: the case was REMANDED to trial court. Few people seem to grasp the significance of this.
Trial court is generally the only place where one may introduce controversial evidence may be used in making a final decision (generally, evidence introduced in other ways is only usable in deciding whether a case should go to, or return to, trial court). The indictment against Miller was initially thrown out before his case ever got to trial court, and thus before he had any opportunity to present any evidence of anything. The Supreme Court didn't find evidence that a sawed-off shotgun wasn't a militarily-suitable weapon, nor did it find that since Jack Miller had failed to present in timely fashion evidence of military suitability, it could affirmatively rule that he could not make such a claim (having never gone to trial, Miller had not yet had the opportunity to present such evidence). All it found was that the case couldn't be thrown out on Second-Amendment grounds until the question of military utility had been addressed in trial court.
Had the case against Miller and Layton gone to trial court, the two of them would have had the opportunity to present evidence that short shotguns were sometimes used in World War I. The government would have had a very time winning its case; although trial courts do not set legally-binding precedents, if it became well-known that Miller was acquitted despite clear evidence that he had possessed the weapons in question without proper tax payment, NFA offenses would have become unprosecutable.
I wish an anti-gun legal scholar could explain a couple things:
This was judicial activism at its worst.
Interesting: he needed to have the Supreme Court hear the case before Miller et al. could present evidence.
BTW, reading more of the history, it seems even clearer why Miller needed the shotgun; by stealing it, the government is complicit in Miller's murder.
Fixed that for you.
L
THE PECULIAR STORY OF UNITED STATES V. MILLER
Has this story been posted to FreeRepublic separately? It certainly deserves it.
Not when I just searched for it, probably because of the pdf format.
Didn't A. Kennedy mention the "deficiency" in Miller during the oral argument for D.C. v Heller?
THE PECULIAR STORY OF UNITED STATES V. MILLER
I found this cached version, but it needs serious editing.
The AR-10 I was thinking of is the original, full auto. That's why I mentioned the transfer tax stamp.
You know, that's, it could be argued that that was, you know, legal malpractice," said Oklahoma City University professor Michael O'Shea.
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