July 26, 1934

The National Firearms Act became effective. The act was the basis for an indictment of two men, Frank Layton and Jack Miller, whom federal agents had suspected of being moonshiners and bank robbers. The men were charged with transporting an unregistered sawed-off shotgun from Claremore, Oklahoma, to Siloam Springs (Benton County) in violation of the federal act. The case eventually became the single instance in which the U.S. Supreme Court explicitly tackled the Second Amendment in the twentieth century, but it remains controversial. Although the case went back and forth several times through the court system, the question of its application to Second Amendment rights was never fully resolved, partly because before the conclusion, Miller had died and Layton had pled guilty.

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