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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
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No. 92-1441
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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.