Opinion ID: 445035
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Antique Firearm Defense

Text: 18 Section 5861 of 26 U.S.C. makes it unlawful for a person to possess a firearm that is not registered to him in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record, id. Sec. 5861(d), or to possess a firearm that is not identified by a serial number, id. Sec. 5861(i). The term firearm is defined in 26 U.S.C. Sec. 5845(a), which provides in pertinent part as follows: 19 The term firearm means (1) a shotgun having a barrel or barrels of less than 18 inches in length; (2) a weapon made from a shotgun if such weapon as modified has an overall length of less than 26 inches or a barrel or barrels of less than 18 inches in length; .... The term firearm shall not include an antique firearm or any device (other than a machinegun or destructive device) which, although designed as a weapon, the Secretary finds by reason of the date of its manufacture, value, design, and other characteristics is primarily a collector's item and is not likely to be used as a weapon. 20 The term antique firearm is defined in Sec. 5845(g) as 21 any firearm not designed or redesigned for using rim fire or conventional center fire ignition with fixed ammunition and manufactured in or before 1898 (including any matchlock, flintlock, percussion cap, or similar type of ignition system or replica thereof, whether actually manufactured before or after the year 1898) and also any firearm using fixed ammunition manufactured in or before 1898, for which ammunition is no longer manufactured in the United States and is not readily available in the ordinary channels of commercial trade. 22 This definition thus creates two categories of antiques: the first, described in the clause preceding the parenthetical, focuses chiefly on the design of the weapon; the second, which follows the parenthetical, deals with the availability of ammunition. The pre-parenthetical portion of the definition is not in issue here. That portion excludes from the definition of antique any weapon that is designed for using conventional center fire ignition with fixed ammunition; both of the expert witnesses at trial made clear that the shotgun found in the ceiling was so designed. Thus, the first part of the Sec. 5845(g) definition is not invoked by Tribunella. 23 Rather, Tribunella relies on the second part of the definition, contending that the shotgun was a firearm using fixed ammunition manufactured in or before 1898, for which ammunition is no longer manufactured in the United States and is not readily available in the ordinary channels of commercial trade. He construes this provision to mean that if ammunition designed for this shotgun is not now manufactured or commercially available, the shotgun is an antique within the meaning of Sec. 5845(g). The government, on the other hand, asks us to interpret this language to mean that if any ammunition usable in the weapon is readily available in the ordinary channels of commerce, the weapon is not an antique. We think the government's interpretation more nearly reflects both the statutory language and Congress's intent. 24 The language in question imposes two conditions related to ammunition, both of which must be satisfied for the gun to qualify as an antique. The first condition is that ammunition for the pre-1899 gun 2 is no longer manufactured in the United States; the second is that ammunition for the gun is not readily available in the ordinary channels of commercial trade. Although the first condition appears to focus on ammunition designed specifically for the pre-1899 gun, no such focus is spelled out in the second condition. Tribunella's interpretation of the second condition as requiring only that specifically designed ammunition be unavailable is not definitely refuted by the language of the condition. Yet his argument would be more persuasive if, in the clause for which ammunition is no longer manufactured in the United States and is not readily available, the words and is not had been replaced simply by the word or, or if the word not had been replaced by the phrase no longer; either substitution would have made it clear that not readily available was intended to mean no longer readily available. 25 In contrast, the government's interpretation, which itself requires some interpolation, is truer to the language Congress actually used. The government asks us to recognize that the two conditions relating to ammunition are discrete and to treat the phrase for which ammunition as commutative, thereby reading the two conditions as (1) for which ammunition is no longer manufactured, and (2) for which ammunition ... is not readily available. We agree that the statute should be so parsed. The only difficulty in the government's contention that the second condition applies to any ammunition and not to just specially designed ammunition is that it attributes to the word for different connotations in the two conditions: in the first, for means designed for use in; in the second, for means able to be used in. 26 We think the government's interpretation is more accurate than that of Tribunella. It is more likely that Congress meant the word for to have different connotations in accordance with its context than that it used the absolute word not to denote the less absolute concept of no longer. Thus, we read Sec. 5845(g) as excluding from the definition of antique any firearm for which any usable ammunition is readily available in ordinary channels of commerce. 27 This reading of the statutory language is consistent with Congress's goal in enacting the legislation containing the section, which was to achieve greater control and regulation of weapons that can be used in violent crimes. Section 5845 was modified in 1968 as part of the Gun Control Act of 1968, Pub.L. No. 90-618, 82 Stat. 1213 (1968), which amended both the National Firearms Act, of which Sec. 5845(g) is a part, and Title IV of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, Pub.L. No. 90-351, 82 Stat. 197, 225 (1968) (Omnibus Act). The principal purposes of the Gun Control Act were 28 to make it possible to keep firearms out of the hands of those not legally entitled to possess them because of age, criminal background, or incompetency, and to assist law enforcement authorities in the States and their subdivisions in combating the increasing prevalence of crime in the United States. 29 S.Rep. No. 1501, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. 22 (1968). The Senate Report pointed out that in 1967, 134,000 American citizens had been victimized by gunmen in the United States. The firearms abuse problem had been partially addressed by the enactment of Title IV of the Omnibus Act, but that statute dealt with handguns rather than rifles and shotguns. Thus, a report of the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary stated that 30 [t]he urgent necessity for adding restrictions on transactions in long guns equivalent to those Congress has already applied to handguns is sadly evident from recent history and mounting statistics. Of the 6,500 firearms murders in the United States each year, 30 percent, or over 2,000, are committed with rifles or shotguns. Ninety-five percent of all law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty are victims of firearms--and one out of every four of these is killed by a rifle or shotgun.... President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Medgar Evers, and the 16 dead and 31 wounded victims of a deranged man firing from the tower of the University of Texas were all shot by rifles or shotguns. 31 H.R.Rep. No. 1577, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. 7-8 (1968), reprinted in 1968 U.S. Code Cong. & Admin. News, 4410, 4413. To give further aid in curbing the problem of gun abuse, Title I of the Gun Control Act, which amended the Omnibus Act and became Secs. 921-928 of 18 U.S.C., imposed strict licensing requirements on persons who would, for example, sell or transport any of a variety of firearms in interstate commerce; and Title II amended the National Firearms Act to add certain devices to the listing of firearms that must be registered. 32 The exclusion of antiques from Sec. 5845(a)'s definition of firearm was among the new provisions included in the Gun Control Act, and a similar exclusion was provided in 18 U.S.C. Sec. 921(a)(3). 3 The exclusion of antiques reflected a concern that the Gun Control Act not unnecessarily interfere with the interests of institutions such as museums and of those engaged in the hobby of collecting antique guns. See, e.g., H.R.Rep. No. 1577, supra, at 9, reprinted in 1968 U.S. Code Cong. & Admin. News, 4410, 4415; 114 Cong.Rec. at 26863 (1968) (remarks of Senator Long). The fact, however, that the Gun Control Act restrictively defined antiques in terms of the type of ammunition the weapon could use reveals that Congress's overriding concern was for decreasing the violent use of guns. Thus, we conclude that the statutory scheme--of pervasive regulation of firearms, with an exemption for antiques, but with the exclusion from the exemption of even old guns for which ammunition is still made or is readily commercially available--reflects an intention on the part of Congress to exclude from regulation only those weapons that are unlikely to be usable for violent acts. 33 This view is further supported by other parts of the statutory scheme and by comments of the legislators with respect to the various statutes' exemptions for antiques. In the National Firearms Act, for example, after providing that antiques are excluded from the term firearm, Sec. 5845(a) goes on to exclude other devices, except machineguns and destructive devices, whose characteristics lead the Secretary of the Treasury to find that they are primarily collector's items that are not likely to be used as a weapon. See also 26 U.S.C. Sec. 5845(f) (device is not a destructive device subject to regulation if Secretary finds it not likely to be used as a weapon); 18 U.S.C. Sec. 921(a)(4) (same). The remarks of several legislators similarly revealed that the unlikelihood of use as a weapon was viewed as a common characteristic of the devices intended to come within the definition of antiques. For example, in discussing the exemption for antiques proposed as part of the Omnibus Act, 4 Senator Tower described antiques as items that had little, if any, practical use as a firearm in the modern connotation, and repeatedly referred to them as obsolete arms. 114 Cong.Rec. 14793 (1968) (remarks of Senator Tower). He also likened them to wooden model[s] of guns. Id.; see also 114 Cong.Rec. 26901 (1968) (remarks of Senator Dodd with respect to nonantique curio guns: I am talking about lethal firearms, not antiques.). 34 In light of Congress's evident intent to regulate weapons that are not unlikely to be used as weapons, we conclude that Sec. 5845(g)'s final clause should not be interpreted as though it referred solely to ammunition designed specifically for the pre-1899 firearm. If ammunition made for other weapons is readily available in commercial channels and is usable in a pre-1899 firearm, it cannot safely be inferred that the pre-1899 firearm is never likely to be used as a weapon. We thus conclude that Sec. 5845 does not exempt such a firearm from requirements of the National Firearms Act. 35 We are not deflected from this conclusion by the opinion of Tribunella's expert that an old gun using modern ammunition will eventually explode. The witness himself indicated that such a gun might be fired a hundred times before it would injure the shooter. 5