Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
From: [l v c] at [cbvox1.cb.att.com] (Larry Cipriani)
Subject: Staples v. United States 92-1441
Date: Tue, 24 May 1994 03:01:51 GMT
NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is
being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.
The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been
prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.
See United States v. Detroit Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
STAPLES v. UNITED STATES
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the tenth circuit
No. 92-1441. Argued November 30, 1993-Decided May 23, 1994
The National Firearms Act criminalizes possession of an unregis-
tered ``firearm,'' 26 U. S. C. 5861(d), including a ``machinegun,''
5845(a)(6), which is defined as a weapon that automatically fires
more than one shot with a single pull of the trigger, 5845(b).
Petitioner Staples was charged with possessing an unregistered
machinegun in violation of 5861(d) after officers searching his
home seized a semiautomatic rifle-i.e., a weapon that normally
fires only one shot with each trigger pull-that had apparently
been modified for fully automatic fire. At trial, Staples testified
that the rifle had never fired automatically while he possessed it
and that he had been ignorant of any automatic firing capability.
He was convicted after the District Court rejected his proposed
jury instruction under which, to establish a 5861(d) violation, the
Government would have been required to prove beyond a reason-
able doubt that Staples knew that the gun would fire fully auto-
matically. The Court of Appeals affirmed, concluding that the
Government need not prove a defendant's knowledge of a weapon's
physical properties to obtain a conviction under 5861(d).
Held: To obtain a 5861(d) conviction, the Government should have
been required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Staples
knew that his rifle had the characteristics that brought it within
the statutory definition of a machinegun. Pp. 4-19.
(a) The common-law rule requiring mens rea as an element of
a crime informs interpretation of 5861(d) in this case. Because
some indication of congressional intent, express or implied, is
required to dispense with mens rea, 5861(d)'s silence on the
element of knowledge required for a conviction does not suggest
that Congress intended to dispense with a conventional mens rea
requirement, which would require that the defendant know the
facts making his conduct illegal. Pp. 4-5.
(b) The Court rejects the Government's argument that the Act
fits within the Court's line of precedent concerning ``public welfare''
or ``regulatory'' offenses and thus that the presumption favoring
mens rea does not apply in this case. In cases concerning public
welfare offenses, the Court has inferred from silence a congressio-
nal intent to dispense with conventional mens rea requirements in
statutes that regulate potentially harmful or injurious items. In
such cases, the Court has reasoned that as long as a defendant
knows that he is dealing with a dangerous device of a character
that places him in responsible relation to a public danger, he
should be alerted to the probability of strict regulation, and is
placed on notice that he must determine at his peril whether his
conduct comes within the statute's inhibition. See, e.g., United
States v. Balint, 258 U. S. 250; United States v. Freed, 401 U. S.
601. Guns, however, do not fall within the category of dangerous
devices as it has been developed in public welfare offense cases.
In contrast to the selling of dangerous drugs at issue in Balint or
the possession of hand grenades considered in Freed, private
ownership of guns in this country has enjoyed a long tradition of
being entirely lawful conduct. Thus, the destructive potential of
guns in general cannot be said to put gun owners sufficiently on
notice of the likelihood of regulation to justify interpreting
5861(d) as dispensing with proof of knowledge of the characteris-
tics that make a weapon a ``firearm'' under the statute. The
Government's interpretation potentially would impose criminal
sanctions on a class of persons whose mental state-ignorance of
the characteristics of weapons in their possession-makes their
actions entirely innocent. Had Congress intended to make outlaws
of such citizens, it would have spoken more clearly to that effect.
Pp. 5-16.
(c) The potentially harsh penalty attached to violation of
5861(d)-up to 10 years' imprisonment-confirms the foregoing
reading of the Act. Where, as here, dispensing with mens rea
would require the defendant to have knowledge only of traditional-
ly lawful conduct, a severe penalty is a further factor tending to
suggest that Congress did not intend to eliminate a mens rea
requirement. Pp. 16-19.
(d) The holding here is a narrow one that depends on a com-
mon-sense evaluation of the nature of the particular device Con-
gress has subjected to regulation, the expectations that individuals
may legitimately have in dealing with that device, and the penalty
attached to a violation. It does not set forth comprehensive
criteria for distinguishing between crimes that require a mental
element and crimes that do not. Pp. 19-21.
971 F. 2d 608, reversed and remanded.
Thomas, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehn-
quist, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, and Souter, JJ., joined. Gins-
burg, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which
O'Connor, J., joined. Stevens, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in
which Blackmun, J., joined.
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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
--------
No. 92-1441
--------
HAROLD E. STAPLES, III, PETITIONER v. UNITED
STATES
on writ of certiorari to the united states court
of appeals for the tenth circuit
[May 23, 1994]
Justice Ginsburg, with whom Justice O'Connor
joins, concurring in the judgment.
The statute petitioner Harold E. Staples is charged
with violating, 26 U. S. C. 5861(d), makes it a crime
for any person to -receive or possess a firearm which is
not registered to him.- Although the word -knowingly-
does not appear in the statute's text, courts generally
assume that Congress, absent a contrary indication,
means to retain a mens rea requirement. Ante, at 5; see
Liparota v. United States, 471 U. S. 419, 426 (1985);
United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 438 U. S.
422, 437-438 (1978). Thus, our holding in United
States v. Freed, 401 U. S. 601 (1971), that 5861(d) does
not require proof of knowledge that the firearm is
unregistered, rested on the premise that the defendant
indeed knew the items he possessed were hand gre-
nades. Id., at 607; id., at 612 (Brennan, J., concurring
in judgment) (-The Government and the Court agree
that the prosecutor must prove knowing possession of
the items and also knowledge that the items possessed
were hand grenades.-).
Conviction under 5861(d), the Government accord-
ingly concedes, requires proof that Staples -knowingly-
possessed the machinegun. Brief for United States 23.
The question before us is not whether knowledge of
possession is required, but what level of knowledge
suffices: (1) knowledge simply of possession of the
object; (2) knowledge, in addition, that the object is a
dangerous weapon; (3) knowledge, beyond dangerousness,
of the characteristics that render the object subject to
regulation, for example, awareness that the weapon is a
machinegun.
Recognizing that the first reading effectively dispenses
with mens rea, the Government adopts the second,
contending that it avoids criminalizing -apparently
innocent conduct,- Liparota, supra, at 426, because
under the second reading, -a defendant who possessed
what he thought was a toy or a violin case, but which
in fact was a machinegun, could not be convicted.- Brief
for United States 23. The Government, however, does
not take adequate account of the -widespread lawful gun
ownership- Congress and the States have allowed to
persist in this country. See United States v. Harris, 959
F. 2d 246, 261 (CADC) (per curiam), cert. denied, 506
U. S. ___ (1992). Given the notable lack of compre-
hensive regulation, -mere unregistered possession of
certain types of [regulated weapons]-often [difficult to
distinguish] from other, [non-regulated] types,- has been
held inadequate to establish the requisite knowledge.
See 959 F. 2d, at 261.
The Nation's legislators chose to place under a
registration requirement only a very limited class of
firearms, those they considered especially dangerous.
The generally -dangerous- character of all guns, the
Court therefore observes, ante, at 11-12, did not suffice
to give individuals in Staples' situation cause to inquire
about the need for registration. Compare United States
v. Balint, 258 U. S. 250 (1922) (requiring reporting of
sale of strictly regulated narcotics, opium and cocaine).
Only the third reading, then, suits the purpose of the
mens rea requirement-to shield people against punish-
ment for apparently innocent activity.
The indictment in Staples' case charges that he
-knowingly received and possessed firearms.- App. to
Brief for Appellant in No. 91-5033 (CA10), p. 1.
-Firearms- has a circumscribed statutory definition. See
26 U. S. C. 5845(a). The -firear[m]- the Government
contends Staples possessed in violation of 5861(d) is a
machinegun. See 5845(a)(6). The indictment thus
effectively charged that Staples knowingly possessed a
machinegun. -Knowingly possessed- logically means
-possessed and knew that he possessed.- The
Government can reconcile the jury instruction with the
indictment only on the implausible assumption that the
term -firear[m]- has two different meanings when used
once in the same charge-simply -gun- when referring
to what petitioner knew, and -machinegun- when
referring to what he possessed. See Cunningham, Levi,
Green, & Kaplan, Plain Meaning and Hard Cases, 103
Yale L. J. 1561, 1576-1577 (1994)); cf. Ratzlaf v. United
States, 510 U. S. ___ (1994) (slip op., at 8) (construing
statutory term to bear same meaning -each time it is
called into play-).
For these reasons, I conclude that conviction under
5861(d) requires proof that the defendant knew he
possessed not simply a gun, but a machinegun. The
indictment in this case, but not the jury instruction,
properly described this knowledge requirement. I there-
fore concur in the Court's judgment.
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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
--------
No. 92-1441
--------
HAROLD E. STAPLES, III, PETITIONER v. UNITED
STATES
on writ of certiorari to the united states court
of appeals for the tenth circuit
[May 23, 1994]
Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Blackmun
joins, dissenting.
To avoid a slight possibility of injustice to unsophisti-
cated owners of machineguns and sawed-off shotguns,
the Court has substituted its views of sound policy for
the judgment Congress made when it enacted the
National Firearms Act (or Act). Because the Court's
addition to the text of 26 U. S. C. 5861(d) is foreclosed
by both the statute and our precedent, I respectfully
dissent.
The Court is preoccupied with guns that -generally
can be owned in perfect innocence.- Ante, at 11. This
case, however, involves a semiautomatic weapon that
was readily convertible into a machinegun-a weapon
that the jury found to be -`a dangerous device of a type
as would alert one to the likelihood of regulation.'-
Ante, at 3. These are not guns -of some sort- that can
be found in almost -50 percent of American homes.-
Ante, at 13. They are particularly dangerous-indeed,
a substantial percentage of the unregistered machine-
guns now in circulation are converted semiautomatic
weapons.
The question presented is whether the National Fire-
arms Act imposed on the Government the burden of
proving beyond a reasonable doubt not only that the
defendant knew he possessed a dangerous device
sufficient to alert him to regulation, but also that he
knew it had all the characteristics of a -firearm- as
defined in the statute. Three unambiguous guideposts
direct us to the correct answer to that question: the text
and structure of the Act, our cases construing both this
Act and similar regulatory legislation, and the Act's
history and interpretation.
I
Contrary to the assertion by the Court, the text of the
statute does provide -explicit guidance in this case.- Cf.
ante, at 4. The relevant section of the Act makes it
-unlawful for any person . . . to receive or possess a
firearm which is not registered to him in the National
Firearms Registration and Transfer Record.- 26 U. S. C.
5861(d). Significantly, the section contains no knowl-
edge requirement, nor does it describe a common-law
crime.
The common law generally did not condemn acts as
criminal unless the actor had -an evil purpose or mental
culpability,- Morissette v. United States, 342 U. S. 246,
252 (1952), and was aware of all the facts that made the
conduct unlawful. United States v. Balint, 258 U. S.
250, 251-252 (1922). In interpreting statutes that
codified traditional common-law offenses, courts usually
followed this rule, even when the text of the statute
contained no such requirement. Ibid. Because the
offense involved in this case is entirely a creature of
statute, however, -the background rules of the common
law,- cf. ante, at 5, do not require a particular construc-
tion, and critically different rules of construction apply.
See Morissette v. United States, 342 U. S. 246, 252-260
(1952).
In Morissette, Justice Jackson outlined one such inter-
pretive rule:
-[C]ongressional silence as to mental elements in an
Act merely adopting into federal statutory law a
concept of crime already . . . well defined in common
law and statutory interpretation by the states may
warrant quite contrary inferences than the same
silence in creating an offense new to general law, for
whose definition the courts have no guidance except
the Act.- Id., at 262.
Although the lack of an express knowledge requirement
in 5861(d) is not dispositive, see United States v.
United States Gypsum Co., 438 U. S. 422, 438 (1978), its
absence suggests that Congress did not intend to require
proof that the defendant knew all of the facts that made
his conduct illegal.
The provision's place in the overall statutory scheme,
see Crandon v. United States, 494 U. S. 152, 158 (1990),
confirms this intention. In 1934, when Congress
originally enacted the statute, it limited the coverage
of the 1934 Act to a relatively narrow category of
weapons such as submachineguns and sawed-off shot-
guns-weapons characteristically used only by profes-
sional gangsters like Al Capone, Pretty Boy Floyd, and
their henchmen. At the time, the Act would have had
little application to guns used by hunters or guns kept
at home as protection against unwelcome intruders.
Congress therefore could reasonably presume that a
person found in possession of an unregistered machine-
gun or sawed-off shotgun intended to use it for criminal
purposes. The statute as a whole, and particularly the
decision to criminalize mere possession, reflected a
legislative judgment that the likelihood of innocent
possession of such an unregistered weapon was remote,
and far less significant than the interest in depriving
gangsters of their use.
In addition, at the time of enactment, this Court had
already construed comparable provisions of the Harrison
Anti-Narcotic Act not to require proof of knowledge of all
the facts that constitute the proscribed offense. United
States v. Balint, 258 U. S. 250 (1922). Indeed, Attor-
ney General Cummings expressly advised Congress that
the text of the gun control legislation deliberately
followed the language of the Anti-Narcotic Act to reap
the benefit of cases construing it. Given the reasoning
of Balint, we properly may infer that Congress did not
intend the Court to read a stricter knowledge require-
ment into the gun control legislation than we read into
the Anti-Narcotic Act. Cannon v. University of Chicago,
441 U. S. 677, 698-699 (1979).
Like the 1934 Act, the current National Firearms Act
is primarily a regulatory measure. The statute estab-
lishes taxation, registration, reporting, and record-
keeping requirements for businesses and transactions
involving statutorily defined firearms, and requires that
each firearm be identified by a serial number. 26
U. S. C. 5801-5802, 5811-5812, 5821-5822, 5842-
5843. The Secretary of the Treasury must maintain a
central registry that includes the names and addresses
of persons in possession of all firearms not controlled by
the Government. 5841. Congress also prohibited
certain acts and omissions, including the possession of
an unregistered firearm. 5861.
As the Court acknowledges, ante, at 7, to interpret
statutory offenses such as 5861(d), we look to -the
nature of the statute and the particular character of the
items regulated- to determine the level of knowledge
required for conviction. An examination of 5861(d) in
light of our precedent dictates that the crime of posses-
sion of an unregistered machinegun is in a category of
offenses described as -public welfare- crimes. Our
decisions interpreting such offenses clearly require
affirmance of petitioner's conviction.
II
-Public welfare- offenses share certain characteristics:
(1) they regulate -dangerous or deleterious devices or
products or obnoxious waste materials,- see United
States v. International Minerals & Chemical Corp., 402
U. S. 558, 565 (1971); (2) they -heighten the duties of
those in control of particular industries, trades, proper-
ties or activities that affect public health, safety or
welfare,- Morissette, 342 U. S., at 254; and (3) they
-depend on no mental element but consist only of
forbidden acts or omissions,- id., at 252-253. Examples
of such offenses include Congress' exertion of its power
to keep dangerous narcotics, hazardous substances,
and impure and adulterated foods and drugs out of
the channels of commerce.
Public welfare statutes render criminal -a type of
conduct that a reasonable person should know is subject
to stringent public regulation and may seriously threaten
the community's health or safety.- Liparota v. United
States, 471 U. S. 419, 433 (1985). Thus, under such
statutes, -a defendant can be convicted even though he
was unaware of the circumstances of his conduct that
made it illegal.- Id., at 443, n. 7 (White, J., dissenting).
Referring to the strict criminal sanctions for unintended
violations of the food and drug laws, Justice Frankfurter
wrote:
-The purposes of this legislation thus touch phases
of the lives and health of people which, in the
circumstances of modern industrialism, are largely
beyond self-protection. Regard for these purposes
should infuse construction of the legislation if it is
to be treated as a working instrument of govern-
ment and not merely as a collection of English
words. . . . The prosecution . . . is based on a now
familiar type of legislation whereby penalties serve
as effective means of regulation. Such legislation
dispenses with the conventional requirement for
criminal conduct-awareness of some wrongdoing.
In the interest of the larger good it puts the burden
of acting at hazard upon a person otherwise inno-
cent but standing in responsible relation to a public
danger.- United States v. Dotterweich, 320 U. S.
277, 280-281 (1943) (citing United States v. Balint,
258 U. S. 250 (1922); other citations omitted).
The National Firearms Act unquestionably is a public
welfare statute. United States v. Freed, 401 U. S. 601,
609 (1971) (holding that this statute -is a regulatory
measure in the interest of the public safety-). Congress
fashioned a legislative scheme to regulate the commerce
and possession of certain types of dangerous devices,
including specific kinds of weapons, to protect the health
and welfare of the citizenry. To enforce this scheme,
Congress created criminal penalties for certain acts
and omissions. The text of some of these offenses-
including the one at issue here-contains no knowledge
requirement.
The Court recognizes:
-[W]e have reasoned that as long as a defendant
knows that he is dealing with a dangerous device of
a character that places him `in responsible relation
to a public danger,' Dotterweich, supra, at 281, he
should be alerted to the probability of strict regula-
tion, and we have assumed that in such cases
Congress intended to place the burden on the
defendant to `ascertain at his peril whether [his
conduct] comes within the inhibition of the statute.'
Balint, supra, at 254.- Ante, at 7.
We thus have read a knowledge requirement into public
welfare crimes, but not a requirement that the defend-
ant know all the facts that make his conduct illegal.
Although the Court acknowledges this standard, it
nevertheless concludes that a gun is not the type of
dangerous device that would alert one to the possibility
of regulation.
Both the Court and Justice Ginsburg erroneously
rely upon the -tradition[al]- innocence of gun ownership
to find that Congress must have intended the Govern-
ment to prove knowledge of all the characteristics that
make a weapon a statutory -firear[m].- Ante, at 10-12;
ante, at 2-3 (Ginsburg, J., concurring in judgment). We
held in Freed, however, that a 5861(d) offense may be
committed by one with no awareness of either wrongdo-
ing or of all the facts that constitute the offense. 401
U. S., at 607-610. Nevertheless, the Court, asserting
that the Government -gloss[es] over the distinction be-
tween grenades and guns,- determines that -the gap
between Freed and this case is too wide to bridge.-
Ante, at 9. As such, the Court instead reaches the
rather surprising conclusion that guns are more analo-
gous to food stamps than to hand grenades. Even if
one accepts that dubious proposition, the Court founds
it upon a faulty premise: its mischaracterization of the
Government's submission as one contending that -all
guns . . . are dangerous devices that put gun owners on
notice . . . .- Ante, at 8 (emphasis added). Accurate-
ly identified, the Government's position presents the
question whether guns such as the one possessed by
petitioner -`are highly dangerous offensive weapons, no
less dangerous than the narcotics'- in Balint or the
hand grenades in Freed, see ante, at 8, (quoting Freed,
401 U. S., at 609).
Thus, even assuming that the Court is correct that the
mere possession of an ordinary rifle or pistol does not
entail sufficient danger to alert one to the possibility of
regulation, that conclusion does not resolve this case.
Petitioner knowingly possessed a semiautomatic weapon
that was readily convertible into a machinegun. The
-`character and nature'- of such a weapon is sufficiently
hazardous to place the possessor on notice of the possi-
bility of regulation. See Posters `N' Things, Ltd. v.
United States, ___ U. S. ___, ___ (1994) (slip op., at 12)
(citation omitted). No significant difference exists
between imposing upon the possessor a duty to deter-
mine whether such a weapon is registered, Freed, 401
U. S., at 607-610, and imposing a duty to determine
whether that weapon has been converted into a machine-
gun.
Cases arise, of course, in which a defendant would not
know that a device was dangerous unless he knew that
it was a -firearm- as defined in the Act. Freed was
such a case; unless the defendant knew that the device
in question was a hand grenade, he would not necessar-
ily have known that it was dangerous. But given the
text and nature of the statute, it would be utterly im-
plausible to suggest that Congress intended the owner
of a sawed-off shotgun to be criminally liable if he knew
its barrel was 17.5 inches long but not if he mistakenly
believed the same gun had an 18-inch barrel. Yet the
Court's holding today assumes that Congress intended
that bizarre result.
The enforcement of public welfare offenses always
entails some possibility of injustice. Congress neverthe-
less has repeatedly decided that an overriding public
interest in health or safety may outweigh that risk
when a person is dealing with products that are suffi-
ciently dangerous or deleterious to make it reasonable
to presume that he either knows, or should know,
whether those products conform to special regulatory
requirements. The dangerous character of the product
is reasonably presumed to provide sufficient notice of
the probability of regulation to justify strict enforcement
against those who are merely guilty of negligent rather
than willful misconduct.
The National Firearms Act is within the category of
public welfare statutes enacted by Congress to regulate
highly dangerous items. The Government submits that
a conviction under such a statute may be supported by
proof that the defendant -knew the item at issue was
highly dangerous and of a type likely to be subject to
regulation.- Brief for United States 9. It is undis-
puted that the evidence in this case met that standard.
Nevertheless, neither Justice Thomas for the Court nor
Justice Ginsburg has explained why such a knowledge
requirement is unfaithful to our cases or to the text of
the Act. Instead, following the approach of their
decision in United States v. Harris, 959 F. 2d 246,
260-261 (CADC) (per curiam), cert. denied, sub nom.
Smith v. United States, 506 U. S. ___ (1992), they have
simply explained why, in their judgment, it would be
unfair to punish the possessor of this machinegun.
III
The history and interpretation of the National Fire-
arms Act supports the conclusion that Congress did not
intend to require knowledge of all the facts that consti-
tute the offense of possession of an unregistered weap-
on. During the first 30 years of enforcement of the
1934 Act, consistent with the absence of a knowledge
requirement and with the reasoning in Balint, courts
uniformly construed it not to require knowledge of all
the characteristics of the weapon that brought it within
the statute. In a case decided in 1963, then-Judge
Blackmun reviewed the earlier cases and concluded that
the defendant's knowledge that he possessed a gun was
-all the scienter which the statute requires.- Sipes v.
United States, 321 F. 2d 174, 179 (CA8), cert. denied,
375 U. S. 913 (1963).
Congress subsequently amended the statute twice,
once in 1968 and again in 1986. Both amendments
added knowledge requirements to other portions of the
Act, but neither the text nor the history of either
amendment discloses an intent to add any other knowl-
edge requirement to the possession of an unregistered
firearm offense. Given that, with only one partial ex-
ception, every federal tribunal to address the question
had concluded that proof of knowledge of all the facts
constituting a violation was not required for a conviction
under 5861(d), we may infer that Congress intended
that interpretation to survive. See Lorillard v. Pons,
434 U. S. 575, 580 (1978).
In short, petitioner's knowledge that he possessed an
item that was sufficiently dangerous to alert him to the
likelihood of regulation would have supported a convic-
tion during the first half century of enforcement of this
statute. Unless application of that standard to a partic-
ular case violates the Due Process Clause, it is the
responsibility of Congress, not this Court, to amend the
statute if Congress deems it unfair or unduly strict.
IV
On the premise that the purpose of the mens rea
requirement is to avoid punishing people -for apparently
innocent activity,- Justice Ginsburg concludes that
proof of knowledge that a weapon is -`a dangerous
device of a type as would alert one to the likelihood of
regulation'- is not an adequate mens rea requirement,
but that proof of knowledge that the weapon possesses
-`every last characteristic'- that subjects it to regulation
is. Ante, at 3-5, and n. 5 (Ginsburg, J., concurring in
judgment) (quoting the trial court's jury instruction).
Assuming that -innocent activity- describes conduct
without any consciousness of wrongdoing, the risk of
punishing such activity can be avoided only by reading
into the statute the common-law concept of mens rea:
-an evil purpose or mental culpability.- Morissette, 342
U. S. at 252. But even petitioner does not contend
that the Government must prove guilty intent or inten-
tional wrongdoing. Instead, the -mens rea- issue in this
case is simply what knowledge requirement, if any,
Congress implicitly included in this offense. There are
at least five such possible knowledge requirements, four
of which entail the risk that a completely innocent
mistake will subject a defendant to punishment.
First, a defendant may know that he possesses a
weapon with all of the characteristics that make it a
-firearm- within the meaning of the statute and also
know that it has never been registered, but be ignorant
of the federal registration requirement. In such a case,
we presume knowledge of the law even if we know the
defendant is -innocent- in the sense that Justice
Ginsburg uses the word. Second, a defendant may
know that he possesses a weapon with all of the charac-
teristics of a statutory firearm and also know that the
law requires that it be registered, but mistakenly be-
lieve that it is in fact registered. Freed squarely holds
that this defendant's -innocence- is not a defense.
Third, a defendant may know only that he possesses a
weapon with all of the characteristics of a statutory
firearm. Neither ignorance of the registration require-
ment nor ignorance of the fact that the weapon is un-
registered protects this -innocent- defendant. Fourth, a
defendant may know that he possesses a weapon that is
sufficiently dangerous to likely be regulated, but not
know that it has all the characteristics of a statutory
firearm. Petitioner asserts that he is an example of
this -innocent- defendant. Fifth, a defendant may know
that he possesses an ordinary gun and, being aware of
the widespread lawful gun ownership in the country,
reasonably assume that there is no need -to inquire
about the need for registration.- Ante, at 3 (Ginsburg,
J., concurring in judgment). That, of course, is not this
case. See supra, at 1, and n. 1.
Justice Ginsburg treats the first, second, and third
alternatives differently from the fourth and fifth. Her
acceptance of knowledge of the characteristics of a
statutory -firearm- as a sufficient predicate for criminal
liability-despite ignorance of either the duty to register
or the fact of nonregistration, or both-must rest on the
premise that such knowledge would alert the owner to
the likelihood of regulation, thereby depriving the con-
duct of its -apparen[t] innocen[ce].- Yet in the fourth
alternative, a jury determines just such knowledge: that
the characteristics of the weapon known to the defend-
ant would alert the owner to the likelihood of regula-
tion.
In short, Justice Ginsburg's reliance on -the purpose
of the mens rea requirement-to shield people against
punishment for apparently innocent activity,- ante, at 3,
neither explains why ignorance of certain facts is a
defense although ignorance of others is not, nor justifies
her disagreement with the jury's finding that this defen-
dant knew facts that should have caused him to inquire
about the need for registration.
V
This case presents no dispute about the dangerous
character of machineguns and sawed-off shotguns.
Anyone in possession of such a weapon is -standing in
responsible relation to a public danger.- See
Dotterweich, 320 U. S., at 281 (citation omitted). In the
National Firearms Act, Congress determined that the
serious threat to health and safety posed by the private
ownership of such firearms warranted the imposition of
a duty on the owners of dangerous weapons to deter-
mine whether their possession is lawful. Semiautomatic
weapons that are readily convertible into machineguns
are sufficiently dangerous to alert persons who knowing-
ly possess them to the probability of stringent public
regulation. The jury's finding that petitioner knowingly
possessed -a dangerous device of a type as would alert
one to the likelihood of regulation- adequately supports
the conviction.
Accordingly, I would affirm the judgment of the Court
of Appeals.
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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
--------
No. 92-1441
--------
HAROLD E. STAPLES, III, PETITIONER v. UNITED
STATES
on writ of certiorari to the united states court
of appeals for the tenth circuit
[May 23, 1994]
Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the Court.
The National Firearms Act makes it unlawful for any
person to possess a machinegun that is not properly
registered with the Federal Government. Petitioner
contends that, to convict him under the Act, the Govern-
ment should have been required to prove beyond a
reasonable doubt that he knew the weapon he possessed
had the characteristics that brought it within the
statutory definition of a machinegun. We agree and
accordingly reverse the judgment of the Court of
Appeals.
I
The National Firearms Act (Act), 26 U. S. C. 5801-
5872, imposes strict registration requirements on
statutorily defined -firearms.- The Act includes within
the term -firearm- a machinegun, 5845(a)(6), and
further defines a machinegun as -any weapon which
shoots . . . or can be readily restored to shoot, automati-
cally more than one shot, without manual reloading, by
a single function of the trigger.- 5845(b). Thus, any
fully automatic weapon is a -firearm- within the mean-
ing of the Act. Under the Act, all firearms must be
registered in the National Firearms Registration and
Transfer Record maintained by the Secretary of the
Treasury. 5841. Section 5861(d) makes it a crime,
punishable by up to 10 years in prison, see 5871, for
any person to possess a firearm that is not properly
registered.
Upon executing a search warrant at petitioner's home,
local police and agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
and Firearms (BATF) recovered, among other things, an
AR-15 assault rifle. The AR-15 is the civilian version
of the military's M-16 rifle, and is, unless modified, a
semiautomatic weapon. The M-16, in contrast, is a
selective fire rifle that allows the operator, by rotating
a selector switch, to choose semiautomatic or automatic
fire. Many M-16 parts are interchangeable with those
in the AR-15 and can be used to convert the AR-15 into
an automatic weapon. No doubt to inhibit such conver-
sions, the AR-15 is manufactured with a metal stop on
its receiver that will prevent an M-16 selector switch, if
installed, from rotating to the fully automatic position.
The metal stop on petitioner's rifle, however, had been
filed away, and the rifle had been assembled with an M-
16 selector switch and several other M-16 internal
parts, including a hammer, disconnector, and trigger.
Suspecting that the AR-15 had been modified to be
capable of fully automatic fire, BATF agents seized the
weapon. Petitioner subsequently was indicted for unlaw-
ful possession of an unregistered machinegun in viola-
tion of 5861(d).
At trial, BATF agents testified that when the AR-15
was tested, it fired more than one shot with a single
pull of the trigger. It was undisputed that the weapon
was not registered as required by 5861(d). Petitioner
testified that the rifle had never fired automatically
when it was in his possession. He insisted that the
AR-15 had operated only semiautomatically, and even
then imperfectly, often requiring manual ejection of the
spent casing and chambering of the next round.
According to petitioner, his alleged ignorance of any
automatic firing capability should have shielded him
from criminal liability for his failure to register the
weapon. He requested the District Court to instruct the
jury that, to establish a violation of 5861(d), the
Government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that
the defendant -knew that the gun would fire fully
automatically.- 1 App. to Brief for Appellant in No.
91-5033 (CA10), p. 42.
The District Court rejected petitioner's proposed
instruction and instead charged the jury as follows:
-The Government need not prove the defendant
knows he's dealing with a weapon possessing every
last characteristic [which subjects it] to the regula-
tion. It would be enough to prove he knows that he
is dealing with a dangerous device of a type as
would alert one to the likelihood of regulation.-
Tr. 465.
Petitioner was convicted and sentenced to five years'
probation and a $5,000 fine.
The Court of Appeals affirmed. Relying on its decision
in United States v. Mittleider, 835 F. 2d 769 (CA10
1987), cert. denied, 485 U. S. 980 (1988), the court
concluded that the Government need not prove a
defendant's knowledge of a weapon's physical properties
to obtain a conviction under 5861(d). 971 F. 2d 608,
612-613 (CA10 1992). We granted certiorari, 508 U. S.
___ (1993), to resolve a conflict in the Courts of Appeals
concerning the mens rea required under 5861(d).
II
A
Whether or not 5861(d) requires proof that a defend-
ant knew of the characteristics of his weapon that made
it a -firearm- under the Act is a question of statutory
construction. As we observed in Liparota v. United
States, 471 U. S. 419 (1985), -[t]he definition of the
elements of a criminal offense is entrusted to the
legislature, particularly in the case of federal crimes,
which are solely creatures of statute.- Id., at 424 (citing
United States v. Hudson, 7 Cranch 32 (1812)). Thus, we
have long recognized that determining the mental state
required for commission of a federal crime requires
-construction of the statute and . . . inference of the
intent of Congress.- United States v. Balint, 258 U. S.
250, 253 (1922). See also Liparota, supra, at 423.
The language of the statute, the starting place in our
inquiry, see Connecticut Nat. Bank v. Germain, 503
U. S. ___, ___ (1992) (slip op., at 5), provides little
explicit guidance in this case. Section 5861(d) is silent
concerning the mens rea required for a violation. It
states simply that -[i]t shall be unlawful for any person
. . . to receive or possess a firearm which is not regis-
tered to him in the National Firearms Registration and
Transfer Record.- 26 U. S. C. 5861(d). Nevertheless,
silence on this point by itself does not necessarily
suggest that Congress intended to dispense with a
conventional mens rea element, which would require that
the defendant know the facts that make his conduct
illegal. See Balint, supra, at 251 (stating that tradition-
ally, -scienter- was a necessary element in every crime).
See also n. 3, infra. On the contrary, we must construe
the statute in light of the background rules of the
common law, see United States v. United States Gypsum
Co., 438 U. S. 422, 436-437 (1978), in which the
requirement of some mens rea for a crime is firmly
embedded. As we have observed, -[t]he existence of a
mens rea is the rule of, rather than the exception to, the
principles of Anglo-American criminal jurisprudence.-
Id., at 436 (internal quotation marks omitted). See also
Morissette v. United States, 342 U. S. 246, 250 (1952)
(-The contention that an injury can amount to a crime
only when inflicted by intention is no provincial or
transient notion. It is as universal and persistent in
mature systems of law as belief in freedom of the
human will and a consequent ability and duty of the
normal individual to choose between good and evil-).
There can be no doubt that this established concept
has influenced our interpretation of criminal statutes.
Indeed, we have noted that the common law rule
requiring mens rea has been -followed in regard to
statutory crimes even where the statutory definition did
not in terms include it.- Balint, supra, at 251-252.
Relying on the strength of the traditional rule, we have
stated that offenses that require no mens rea generally
are disfavored, Liparota, supra, at 426, and have
suggested that some indication of congressional intent,
express or implied, is required to dispense with mens rea
as an element of a crime. Cf. United States Gypsum,
supra, at 438; Morissette, supra, at 263.
According to the Government, however, the nature and
purpose of the National Firearms Act suggest that the
presumption favoring mens rea does not apply to this
case. The Government argues that Congress intended
the Act to regulate and restrict the circulation of
dangerous weapons. Consequently, in the Government's
view, this case fits in a line of precedent concerning
what we have termed -public welfare- or -regulatory-
offenses, in which we have understood Congress to
impose a form of strict criminal liability through
statutes that do not require the defendant to know the
facts that make his conduct illegal. In construing such
statutes, we have inferred from silence that Congress
did not intend to require proof of mens rea to establish
an offense.
For example, in Balint, supra, we concluded that the
Narcotic Act of 1914, which was intended in part to
minimize the spread of addictive drugs by criminalizing
undocumented sales of certain narcotics, required proof
only that the defendant knew that he was selling drugs,
not that he knew the specific items he had sold were
-narcotics- within the ambit of the statute. See Balint,
supra, at 254. Cf. United States v. Dotterweich, 320
U. S. 277, 281 (1943) (stating in dicta that a statute
criminalizing the shipment of adulterated or misbranded
drugs did not require knowledge that the items were
misbranded or adulterated). As we explained in
Dotterweich, Balint dealt with -a now familiar type of
legislation whereby penalties serve as effective means of
regulation. Such legislation dispenses with the conven-
tional requirement for criminal conduct-awareness of
some wrongdoing.- Id., at 280-281. See also Morissette,
supra, at 252-256.
Such public welfare offenses have been created by
Congress, and recognized by this Court, in -limited
circumstances.- United States Gypsum, 438 U. S., at
437. Typically, our cases recognizing such offenses
involve statutes that regulate potentially harmful or
injurious items. Cf. United States v. International
Minerals & Chemical Corp., 402 U. S. 558, 564-565
(1971) (characterizing Balint and similar cases as
involving statutes regulating -dangerous or deleterious
devices or products or obnoxious waste materials-). In
such situations, we have reasoned that as long as a
defendant knows that he is dealing with a dangerous
device of a character that places him -in responsible
relation to a public danger,- Dotterweich, supra, at 281,
he should be alerted to the probability of strict regula-
tion, and we have assumed that in such cases Congress
intended to place the burden on the defendant to
-ascertain at his peril whether [his conduct] comes
within the inhibition of the statute.- Balint, supra, at
254. Thus, we essentially have relied on the nature of
the statute and the particular character of the items
regulated to determine whether congressional silence
concerning the mental element of the offense should be
interpreted as dispensing with conventional mens rea
requirements. See generally Morissette, supra, at 252-260.
B
The Government argues that 5861(d) defines pre-
cisely the sort of regulatory offense described in Balint.
In this view, all guns, whether or not they are statutory
-firearms,- are dangerous devices that put gun owners
on notice that they must determine at their hazard
whether their weapons come within the scope of the Act.
On this understanding, the District Court's instruction
in this case was correct, because a conviction can rest
simply on proof that a defendant knew he possessed a
-firearm- in the ordinary sense of the term.
The Government seeks support for its position from
our decision in United States v. Freed, 401 U. S. 601
(1971), which involved a prosecution for possession of
unregistered grenades under 5861(d). The defendant
knew that the items in his possession were grenades,
and we concluded that 5861(d) did not require the
Government to prove the defendant also knew that the
grenades were unregistered. Id., at 609. To be sure, in
deciding that mens rea was not required with respect to
that element of the offense, we suggested that the Act
-is a regulatory measure in the interest of the public
safety, which may well be premised on the theory that
one would hardly be surprised to learn that possession
of hand grenades is not an innocent act.- Ibid. Gre-
nades, we explained, -are highly dangerous offensive
weapons, no less dangerous than the narcotics involved
in United States v. Balint.- Ibid. But that reasoning
provides little support for dispensing with mens rea in
this case.
As the Government concedes, Freed did not address
the issue presented here. In Freed, we decided only
that 5861(d) does not require proof of knowledge that
a firearm is unregistered. The question presented by a
defendant who possesses a weapon that is a -firearm-
for purposes of the Act, but who knows only that he has
a -firearm- in the general sense of the term, was not
raised or considered. And our determination that a
defendant need not know that his weapon is unregis-
tered suggests no conclusion concerning whether
5861(d) requires the defendant to know of the features
that make his weapon a statutory -firearm-; different
elements of the same offense can require different
mental states. See Liparota, 471 U. S., at 423, n. 5;
United States v. Bailey, 444 U. S. 394, 405-406 (1980).
See also W. LaFave & A. Scott, Handbook on Criminal
Law 194-195 (1972). Moreover, our analysis in Freed
likening the Act to the public welfare statute in Balint
rested entirely on the assumption that the defendant
knew that he was dealing with hand grenades-that is,
that he knew he possessed a particularly dangerous type
of weapon (one within the statutory definition of a
-firearm-), possession of which was not entirely -inno-
cent- in and of itself. 401 U. S., at 609. The predicate
for that analysis is eliminated when, as in this case, the
very question to be decided is whether the defendant
must know of the particular characteristics that make
his weapon a statutory firearm.
Notwithstanding these distinctions, the Government
urges that Freed's logic applies because guns, no less
than grenades, are highly dangerous devices that should
alert their owners to the probability of regulation. But
the gap between Freed and this case is too wide to
bridge. In glossing over the distinction between gre-
nades and guns, the Government ignores the particular
care we have taken to avoid construing a statute to
dispense with mens rea where doing so would -criminal-
ize a broad range of apparently innocent conduct.-
Liparota, 471 U. S., at 426. In Liparota, we considered
a statute that made unlawful the unauthorized acquisi-
tion or possession of food stamps. We determined that
the statute required proof that the defendant knew his
possession of food stamps was unauthorized, largely
because dispensing with such a mens rea requirement
would have resulted in reading the statute to outlaw a
number of apparently innocent acts. Ibid. Our conclu-
sion that the statute should not be treated as defining
a public welfare offense rested on the common sense
distinction that a -food stamp can hardly be compared
to a hand grenade.- Id., at 433.
Neither, in our view, can all guns be compared to
hand grenades. Although the contrast is certainly not
as stark as that presented in Liparota, the fact remains
that there is a long tradition of widespread lawful gun
ownership by private individuals in this country. Such
a tradition did not apply to the possession of hand
grenades in Freed or to the selling of dangerous drugs
that we considered in Balint. See also International
Minerals, 402 U. S., at 563-565; Balint, 258 U. S., at
254. In fact, in Freed we construed 5861(d) under the
assumption that -one would hardly be surprised to learn
that possession of hand grenades is not an innocent act.-
Freed, supra, at 609. Here, the Government essentially
suggests that we should interpret the section under the
altogether different assumption that -one would hardly
be surprised to learn that owning a gun is not an
innocent act.- That proposition is simply not supported
by common experience. Guns in general are not -delete-
rious devices or products or obnoxious waste materials,-
International Minerals, supra, at 565, that put their
owners on notice that they stand -in responsible relation
to a public danger.- Dotterweich, 320 U. S., at 281.
The Government protests that guns, unlike food
stamps, but like grenades and narcotics, are potentially
harmful devices. Under this view, it seems that
Liparota's concern for criminalizing ostensibly innocuous
conduct is inapplicable whenever an item is sufficiently
dangerous-that is, dangerousness alone should alert an
individual to probable regulation and justify treating a
statute that regulates the dangerous device as dispens-
ing with mens rea. But that an item is -dangerous,- in
some general sense, does not necessarily suggest, as the
Government seems to assume, that it is not also entirely
innocent. Even dangerous items can, in some cases, be
so commonplace and generally available that we would
not consider them to alert individuals to the likelihood
of strict regulation. As suggested above, despite their
potential for harm, guns generally can be owned in
perfect innocence. Of course, we might surely classify
certain categories of guns-no doubt including the
machineguns, sawed-off shotguns, and artillery pieces
that Congress has subjected to regulation-as items the
ownership of which would have the same quasi-suspect
character we attributed to owning hand grenades in
Freed. But precisely because guns falling outside those
categories traditionally have been widely accepted as
lawful possessions, their destructive potential, while
perhaps even greater than that of some items we would
classify along with narcotics and hand grenades, cannot
be said to put gun owners sufficiently on notice of the
likelihood of regulation to justify interpreting 5861(d)
as not requiring proof of knowledge of a weapon's
characteristics.
On a slightly different tack, the Government suggests
that guns are subject to an array of regulations at the
federal, state, and local levels that put gun owners on
notice that they must determine the characteristics of
their weapons and comply with all legal requirements.
But regulation in itself is not sufficient to place gun
ownership in the category of the sale of narcotics in
Balint. The food stamps at issue in Liparota were
subject to comprehensive regulations, yet we did not
understand the statute there to dispense with a mens
rea requirement. Moreover, despite the overlay of legal
restrictions on gun ownership, we question whether
regulations on guns are sufficiently intrusive that they
impinge upon the common experience that owning a gun
is usually licit and blameless conduct. Roughly 50 per
cent of American homes contain at least one firearm of
some sort, and in the vast majority of States, buying
a shotgun or rifle is a simple transaction that would not
alert a person to regulation any more than would buying
a car.
If we were to accept as a general rule the Govern-
ment's suggestion that dangerous and regulated items
place their owners under an obligation to inquire at
their peril into compliance with regulations, we would
undoubtedly reach some untoward results. Automobiles,
for example, might also be termed -dangerous- devices
and are highly regulated at both the state and federal
levels. Congress might see fit to criminalize the viola-
tion of certain regulations concerning automobiles, and
thus might make it a crime to operate a vehicle without
a properly functioning emission control system. But we
probably would hesitate to conclude on the basis of
silence that Congress intended a prison term to apply to
a car owner whose vehicle's emissions levels, wholly
unbeknownst to him, began to exceed legal limits
between regular inspection dates.
Here, there can be little doubt that, as in Liparota,
the Government's construction of the statute potentially
would impose criminal sanctions on a class of persons
whose mental state-ignorance of the characteristics of
weapons in their possession-makes their actions
entirely innocent. The Government does not dispute
the contention that virtually any semiautomatic weapon
may be converted, either by internal modification or, in
some cases, simply by wear and tear, into a machinegun
within the meaning of the Act. Cf. United States v.
Anderson, 885 F. 2d 1248, 1251, 1253-1254 (CA5 1989)
(en banc). Such a gun may give no externally visible
indication that it is fully automatic. See United States
v. Herbert, 698 F. 2d 981, 986 (CA9), cert. denied, 464
U. S. 821 (1983). But in the Government's view, any
person who has purchased what he believes to be a
semiautomatic rifle or handgun, or who simply has
inherited a gun from a relative and left it untouched in
an attic or basement, can be subject to imprisonment,
despite absolute ignorance of the gun's firing capabili-
ties, if the gun turns out to be an automatic.
We concur in the Fifth Circuit's conclusion on this
point: -It is unthinkable to us that Congress intended to
subject such law-abiding, well-intentioned citizens to a
possible ten-year term of imprisonment if . . . what they
genuinely and reasonably believed was a conventional
semiautomatic [weapon] turns out to have worn down
into or been secretly modified to be a fully automatic
weapon.- Anderson, supra, at 1254. As we noted in
Morissette, the -purpose and obvious effect of doing away
with the requirement of a guilty intent is to ease the
prosecution's path to conviction.- 342 U. S., at 263.
We are reluctant to impute that purpose to Congress
where, as here, it would mean easing the path to
convicting persons whose conduct would not even alert
them to the probability of strict regulation in the form
of a statute such as 5861(d).
C
The potentially harsh penalty attached to violation of
5861(d)-up to 10 years' imprisonment-confirms our
reading of the Act. Historically, the penalty imposed
under a statute has been a significant consideration in
determining whether the statute should be construed as
dispensing with mens rea. Certainly, the cases that first
defined the concept of the public welfare offense almost
uniformly involved statutes that provided for only light
penalties such as fines or short jail sentences, not
imprisonment in the state penitentiary. See, e. g.,
Commonwealth v. Raymond, 97 Mass. 567 (1867) (fine
of up to $200 or six months in jail, or both); Common-
wealth v. Farren, 91 Mass. 489 (1864) (fine); People v.
Snowberger, 113 Mich. 86, 71 N. W. 497 (1897) (fine of
up to $500 or incarceration in county jail).
As commentators have pointed out, the small penalties
attached to such offenses logically complemented the
absence of a mens rea requirement: in a system that
generally requires a -vicious will- to establish a crime,
4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *21, imposing severe
punishments for offenses that require no mens rea would
seem incongruous. See Sayre, Public Welfare Offenses,
33 Colum. L. Rev. 55, 70 (1933). Indeed, some courts
justified the absence of mens rea in part on the basis
that the offenses did not bear the same punishments as
-infamous crimes,- Tenement House Dept. v. McDevitt,
215 N. Y. 160, 168, 109 N. E. 88, 90 (1915) (Cardozo,
J.), and questioned whether imprisonment was compati-
ble with the reduced culpability required for such
regulatory offenses. See, e. g., People ex rel. Price v.
Sheffield Farms-Slawson-Decker Co., 225 N. Y. 25,
32-33, 121 N.E. 474, 477 (1918) (Cardozo, J.); id., at 35,
121 N. E., at 478 (Crane, J., concurring) (arguing that
imprisonment for a crime that requires no mens rea
would stretch the law regarding acts mala prohibita
beyond its limitations). Similarly, commentators
collecting the early cases have argued that offenses
punishable by imprisonment cannot be understood to be
public welfare offenses, but must require mens rea. See
R. Perkins, Criminal Law 793-798 (2d ed. 1969) (sug-
gesting that the penalty should be the starting point in
determining whether a statute describes a public welfare
offense); Sayre, supra, at 72 (-Crimes punishable with
prison sentences . . . ordinarily require proof of a guilty
intent-).
In rehearsing the characteristics of the public welfare
offense, we, too, have included in our consideration the
punishments imposed and have noted that -penalties
commonly are relatively small, and conviction does no
grave damage to an offender's reputation.- Morissette,
342 U. S., at 256. We have even recognized that it
was -[u]nder such considerations- that courts have
construed statutes to dispense with mens rea. Ibid.
Our characterization of the public welfare offense in
Morissette hardly seems apt, however, for a crime that
is a felony, as is violation of 5861(d). After all,
-felony- is, as we noted in distinguishing certain com-
mon law crimes from public welfare offenses, -`as bad a
word as you can give to man or thing.'- Morissette,
supra, at 260 (quoting 2 F. Pollock & F. Maitland,
History of English Law 465 (2d ed. 1899)). Close adher-
ence to the early cases described above might suggest
that punishing a violation as a felony is simply incom-
patible with the theory of the public welfare offense. In
this view, absent a clear statement from Congress that
mens rea is not required, we should not apply the public
welfare offense rationale to interpret any statute
defining a felony offense as dispensing with mens rea.
But see Balint, supra.
We need not adopt such a definitive rule of construc-
tion to decide this case, however. Instead, we note only
that where, as here, dispensing with mens rea would
require the defendant to have knowledge only of tradi-
tionally lawful conduct, a severe penalty is a further
factor tending to suggest that Congress did not intend
to eliminate a mens rea requirement. In such a case,
the usual presumption that a defendant must know the
facts that make his conduct illegal should apply.
III
In short, we conclude that the background rule of the
common law favoring mens rea should govern interpreta-
tion of 5861(d) in this case. Silence does not suggest
that Congress dispensed with mens rea for the element
of 5861(d) at issue here. Thus, to obtain a conviction,
the Government should have been required to prove that
petitioner knew of the features of his AR-15 that
brought it within the scope of the Act.
We emphasize that our holding is a narrow one. As
in our prior cases, our reasoning depends upon a com-
mon-sense evaluation of the nature of the particular
device or substance Congress has subjected to regulation
and the expectations that individuals may legitimately
have in dealing with the regulated items. In addition,
we think that the penalty attached to 5861(d) suggests
that Congress did not intend to eliminate a mens rea
requirement for violation of the section. As we noted in
Morissette, -[N]either this Court nor, so far as we are
aware, any other has undertaken to delineate a precise
line or set forth comprehensive criteria for distinguishing
between crimes that require a mental element and
crimes that do not.- 342 U. S., at 260. We attempt no
definition here, either. We note only that our holding
depends critically on our view that if Congress had
intended to make outlaws of gun owners who were
wholly ignorant of the offending characteristics of their
weapons, and to subject them to lengthy prison terms,
it would have spoken more clearly to that effect. Cf.
United States v. Harris, 959 F. 2d 246, 261 (CADC),
cert. denied, 506 U. S. ___ (1992).
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Court
of Appeals is reversed and the case remanded for further
proceedings consistent with this opinion.
So ordered.
--
Larry Cipriani, [l v cipriani] at [att.com] or attmail!lcipriani