US v MILLER in coments

Why the AR15 Shouldn’t Be Banned - Omaha Outdoors

This is an interesting 2nd Amendment-challenging article in itself, but in the comments someone brought up the question of "US v MILLER":

@mrsatyre "private ownership is, and has been proven in court time and time again, unrelated to militias"
Not exactly. DC v. Heller (2008): "The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home."
But then, US v. Miller (1939):

I take this opportunity to (once again) discuss the MILLER decision:

Note in passing that US v Miller was lost because the attorney assigned to defend Miller failed to attend the hearing ... Miller was lost by default, not because the original argument was specious.

DETAILS: Miller, a bootlegger, had a shotgun to defend himself and his still. When his still was raided and T-men found that Miller had used a sawed-off shotgun to defend it,

Miller decided that the game wasn't worth the ante, and disencumbered himself of the still, the firearm and his lawyers.

His lawyers, no longer having a client and thus no fiduciary interest in the case, declined to attend subsequent hearing(s).

The Federal government, finding itself with an 'easy win', filed for closure.

The judge(s) had only one side of the case upon which to base their decision. Thus the Judicialannouncement:

"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 ..."

(All Emphasis Added! The basis of the judgement was that the defense offered no defense!)

In order to assign the appropriate weight to that decision, I ask you to consider that the defense would have/should have been that the type of firearm used by Miller (a shotgun, if I recall correctly) was inaccurately described by the winning attorney as "not a firearm which had been historically used by the military" or words to that effect)

Any defense attorney in the country could have ... SHOULD HAVE ... pointed at the "Trench Gun" (used by American soldiers during World War 1); which was a 12-gauge shotgun.

But nobody spoke to the 2nd Amendment issue. Nobody cared enough ... except the judges who were left with a Federal case with no defendant ... and they had  recourse except to rule in favor of the only attorneys who appeared to give a damn; the Federal government.

BECAUSE OF THIS COMEDY IN ERRORS we are left with "The Miller Decision" which ignores the 2nd Amendment in favor of a federal prosecutor who was gleefully willing to get a WIN over a bootlegger ... who may, in fact, have been well within his Second Amendment rights to defend his person and his business ... however nefarious both he and his business might be.

The Supreme Court reversed the district court, holding that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual the right to keep and bear a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun. Writing for the unanimous Court, Justice James Clark McReynolds reasoned that because possessing a sawed-off double barrel shotgun does not have a reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia, the Second Amendment does not protect the possession of such an instrument.