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JONES v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

1,000 feet of a school. The defendant in that case, a 12th-
grade student, had been convicted for knowingly possessing
a concealed handgun and bullets at his San Antonio, Texas,
high school, in violation of the federal Act. Holding that
the Act exceeded Congress’ power to regulate commerce, the
Court stressed that the area was one of traditional state con-
cern, see 514 U. S., at 561, n. 3, 567; id., at 577 (Kennedy, J.,
concurring), and that the legislation aimed at activity in
which “neither the actors nor their conduct has a commercial
character,” id., at 580 (Kennedy, J., concurring); id., at 560–
562 (opinion of the Court).

Given the concerns brought to the fore in Lopez, it is ap-
propriate to avoid the constitutional question that would
arise were we to read § 844(i) to render the “traditionally
local criminal conduct” in which petitioner Jones engaged “a
matter for federal enforcement.” United States v. Bass, 404
U. S. 336, 350 (1971). Our comprehension of § 844(i) is addi-
tionally reinforced by other interpretive guides. We have
instructed that “ambiguity concerning the ambit of criminal
statutes should be resolved in favor of lenity,” Rewis v.
United States, 401 U. S. 808, 812 (1971), and that “when
choice has to be made between two readings of what conduct
Congress has made a crime, it is appropriate, before we
choose the harsher alternative, to require that Congress
should have spoken in language that is clear and deﬁnite,”
United States v. Universal C. I. T. Credit Corp., 344 U. S.
218, 221–222 (1952). We have cautioned, as well, that “un-
it will not be
less Congress conveys its purpose clearly,
deemed to have signiﬁcantly changed the federal-state bal-
ance” in the prosecution of crimes. Bass, 404 U. S., at 349.
To read § 844(i) as encompassing the arson of an owner-
occupied private home would effect such a change, for arson
is a paradigmatic common-law state crime. See generally
Poulos, The Metamorphosis of the Law of Arson, 51 Mo.
L. Rev. 295 (1986).