April 18, 1938

Federal agents arrested two men in Arkansas for transporting an unregistered sawed-off shotgun from Claremore, Oklahoma, to Siloam Springs (Benton County). Frank Layton and Jack Miller had been watched by federal agents who suspected them of being moonshiners and bank robbers. Their defense was weakened when their attorney quit because they were unable to pay him. The judge’s opinion was: “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.”