From ca-firearms-owner Mon May 23 15:03:36 1994 Return-Path: ca-firearms-owner Received: from localhost (chan@localhost) by jobe.shell.portal.com (8.6.4/8.6.5) id PAA01307 for ca-firearms-outgoing; Mon, 23 May 1994 15:03:30 -0700 Received: from nova.unix.portal.com (nova.unix.portal.com [156.151.1.101]) by jobe.shell.portal.com (8.6.4/8.6.5) with ESMTP id PAA01301 for ; Mon, 23 May 1994 15:03:26 -0700 Received: from eagle.wd.Cubic.COM (eagle.wd.Cubic.COM [149.63.66.9]) by nova.unix.portal.com (8.6.7/8.6.5) with ESMTP id PAA19028 for ; Mon, 23 May 1994 15:03:18 -0700 Received: from novell.wd.cubic.com (novell.wd.Cubic.COM [149.63.66.2]) by eagle.wd.Cubic.COM (8.3/8.3) with SMTP id OAA05706; Sun, 22 May 1994 14:56:29 -0700 Received: From CWD_E/WORKQUEUE by novell.wd.cubic.com via Charon-4.0A-VROOM with IPX id 100.940523150140.480; 23 May 94 15:05:21 +0500 Message-ID: From: "Shawn G. Bosley" Organization: Cubic To: fap@world.std.com, ca-firearms@shell.portal.com Date: Mon, 23 May 1994 15:01:39 PST Subject: U.S. Supreme Court Has Some Favorable Comments About Guns! Priority: normal X-mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.1 (R1a) Sender: ca-firearms-owner@shell.portal.com Precedence: bulk Status: R The Supreme Court makes a ruling favorable to gun owners: Maybe there's hope yet! ================================================================ STAPLES v. UNITED STATES Docket 92-1441 -- Decided May 23, 1994 ================================================================ The National Firearms Act criminalizes possession of an unregistered "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 reasonable doubt that Staples knew that the gun would fire fully automatically. 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 congressional 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 characteristics 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 traditionally 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 common- sense evaluation of the nature of the particular device Congress 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 Rehnquist, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, and Souter, JJ., joined. Ginsburg, 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. From ca-firearms-owner Mon May 23 15:54:53 1994 Return-Path: ca-firearms-owner Received: from localhost (chan@localhost) by jobe.shell.portal.com (8.6.4/8.6.5) id PAA04710 for ca-firearms-outgoing; Mon, 23 May 1994 15:54:45 -0700 Received: from nova.unix.portal.com (nova.unix.portal.com [156.151.1.101]) by jobe.shell.portal.com (8.6.4/8.6.5) with ESMTP id PAA04702 for ; Mon, 23 May 1994 15:54:40 -0700 Received: from eagle.wd.Cubic.COM (eagle.wd.Cubic.COM [149.63.66.9]) by nova.unix.portal.com (8.6.7/8.6.5) with ESMTP id PAA23794 for ; Mon, 23 May 1994 15:54:33 -0700 Received: from novell.wd.cubic.com (novell.wd.Cubic.COM [149.63.66.2]) by eagle.wd.Cubic.COM (8.3/8.3) with SMTP id PAA05767; Sun, 22 May 1994 15:47:33 -0700 Received: From CWD_E/WORKQUEUE by novell.wd.cubic.com via Charon-4.0A-VROOM with IPX id 100.940523155237.352; 23 May 94 15:56:25 +0500 Message-ID: From: "Shawn G. Bosley" Organization: Cubic To: fap@world.std.com, ca-firearms@shell.portal.com Date: Mon, 23 May 1994 15:52:27 PST Subject: Supreme Court decision 92-1441 -- Opinion Priority: normal X-mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.1 (R1a) Sender: ca-firearms-owner@shell.portal.com Precedence: bulk Status: R Full opinion of STAPLES v. 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. From ca-firearms-owner Mon May 23 16:08:01 1994 Return-Path: ca-firearms-owner Received: from localhost (chan@localhost) by jobe.shell.portal.com (8.6.4/8.6.5) id QAA06914 for ca-firearms-outgoing; Mon, 23 May 1994 16:07:53 -0700 Received: from nova.unix.portal.com (nova.unix.portal.com [156.151.1.101]) by jobe.shell.portal.com (8.6.4/8.6.5) with ESMTP id QAA06908 for ; Mon, 23 May 1994 16:07:51 -0700 Received: from Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Xenon.Stanford.EDU [36.28.0.25]) by nova.unix.portal.com (8.6.7/8.6.5) with SMTP id QAA24780 for ; Mon, 23 May 1994 16:07:50 -0700 Received: by Xenon.Stanford.EDU (5.61+IDA/25-CS-eef) id AA25180; Mon, 23 May 94 16:06:31 -0700 Date: Mon, 23 May 94 16:06:31 -0700 From: Andy Freeman Message-Id: <9405232306.AA25180@Xenon.Stanford.EDU> To: ca-firearms@shell.portal.com Subject: dissent Sender: ca-firearms-owner@shell.portal.com Precedence: bulk Status: R [From the clarinet article.] Justice John Paul Stevens and Harry A. Blackmun dissented. ``Semiautomatic weapons that are readily convertible into machine guns are sufficiently dangerous to alert persons who knowingly possess them to the probability of stringent public regulation,'' Stevens wrote for the two. The case is Staples vs. U.S., 92-1441. -andy