That's a gross misrepresentation of the Miller case. The question to the U.S. Supreme Court was NOT, "Does Mr. Miller have the right to keep and bear a sawed-off shotgun?"
The question before the U.S. Supreme Court was, "Does Section 11 of the 1934 National Firearms Act violate the second amendment?" At least that's how my copy of the case reads.
And the answer of the court was? (Keeping in mind that the Syllabus is *Not* the decision, but rather some clerk's summary of it.) I'll help, here is the ruling of the Court, stripped of all the dicta and historical matter.
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 relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees 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.
The section of the '34 NFA in question read:
It shall be unlawful for any person who is required to register as provided in Section 5 hereof and who shall not have so registered, or any other person who has not in his possession a stamp-affixed order as provided in Section 4 hereof, to ship, carry, or deliver any firearm in interstate commerce.
Mr. Miller was indeed "any person". "firearm" included both machine guns and short barreled shotguns, as well as a few other "nefarious" type weapons. Thus if the keeping of a militia suitable weapon was protected for "any person" then the act would be a violation. If the second amendment only protects the keeping and bearing by "militia men", it would have been sufficient to show that Mr. Miller was not a militia man, rather than dealing with the nature of the weapon. Since the government did raise the fact of Miller not being a militia member, and the court did not even address it, and instead decided on the basis of the nature of the weapon in question, (ie was it a militia suitable weapon), we can only assume that the court did not believe that the second amendment only protected keeping and bearing by militia members, rather than of militia suitable arms.
A short quote from the government's brief.
Indeed, the very language of the Second Amendment discloses that this right has reference only to the keeping and bearing of arms by the people as members of the state militia or other similar military organization provided for by law. The "arms" referred to in the Second Amendment are, moreover, those which ordinarily are used for military or public defense purposes, and the cases unanimously hold that weapons peculiarly adaptable to use by criminals are not within the protection of the Amendment. The firearms referred to in the National Firearms Act, i.e., sawed-off shotguns, sawed-off rifles, and machine guns, clearly have no legitimate use in the hands of private individuals, but, on the contrary, frequently constitute the arsenal of the gangster and the desperado.
Thus the goverment brought up both the "nature of the weapon" and the "militia members only" argument. The court only addressed the former.