http://volokh.com/posts/1179865714.shtml

“. . . the case was brought by the federal government as a test case to quell Second Amendment popular opposition to the Attorney General’s efforts to create federal handgun control. The federal district judge who wrote the one-sentence opinion declaring the National Firearms Act to violate the Second Amendment was a gun control advocate with strong political connections. The prosecution of Miller was perfect as a government-initiated test case, since Miller had an established record as “a pliable snitch” who would cooperate with the government, ensuring that the Supreme Court saw no meaningful opposition to the government’s position.”

The court held that a short barrelled shotgun and Miller were not protected by the second amendment because the weapon in question was not suitable for military and/or militia application. Their ruling was flawed as was their premise. The short barrelled shotgun gained quite a reputation as an effective “trench gun” in WWI, thus they not only ruled against Miller, they did so on a flawed understanding of the facts of the case and in the absence of legal representation for Miller.

This is one of the more shameful derelictions of the highest court. That is why the founders intended and codified the petit jury as the final arbiter, and not the USSC, which just assumed its role as arbiter of constitutional questions in Marbury v. Madison. The USSC assumed a power not assigned it and was not challenged. Hence it has become custom, but it is not the final word.

Amplifying the original post: at a recent legal seminar on firearms law, one of the speakers noted that the first mention of the Second Amendment by the Supreme Court was in the Dred Scott decision, where the opinion noted, with obvious horror, that if a slave became free by moving to a free state he would thereby acquire the rights of a citizen, including the right to keep and bear arms. (You may recall that the Supreme Court held, in Dred Scott, that a slave did NOT become a free man just because he moved to a free state, a ruling which moved the nation one step closer to Civil War.)