In the 1942 case Miller v. United States, Jack Miller and Frank Layton were charged with transporting an unregistered sawed-off shotgun across state lines, a violation of the National Firearms Act of 1934. They argued that this act violated their Second Amendment rights to bear arms. The Supreme Court ruled against them in a unanimous decision stating that there was no evidence showing that a sawed-off shotgun "has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia." Therefore, it did not fall under Second Amendment protection. This ruling established precedent for future cases involving firearms regulation by asserting that weapons must have an evident connection to maintaining such militias in order for individuals' right to possess them be protected under the Constitution.

In the dissenting opinion for Miller v. United States, Justice Frank Murphy argued that the majority's decision was a misinterpretation of both Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. He believed that an individual should not be required to surrender their constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures simply because they are in possession of contraband goods. Furthermore, he disagreed with the notion that such individuals were not entitled to due process under law as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. In his view, these amendments were designed specifically to protect citizens from arbitrary government actions regardless of their guilt or innocence in any given situation; thus, it is inappropriate for them to be disregarded based on assumptions about criminal behavior.