Court Opinion

ID: 9489406
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:15:12.489344+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:31.165032
License: Public Domain

SUHRHEINRICH, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Like the majority, I do not question the wisdom of regulating the transfer and possession of machine guns. I disagree, however, with the majority’s attempt to uphold 18 U.S.C. § 922(o) as a valid exercise of Congress’s Commerce Clause power in light of United States v. Lopez, — U.S.-, 115 S.Ct. 1624, 131 L.Ed.2d 626 (1995).
The arguments against upholding § 922(o) have been persuasively set out by Judge Jones in her dissent from United States v. Kirk, 70 F.3d 791 (5th Cir.1995), petition for reh’g en banc granted, 78 F.3d 160 (5th Cir.1996). Briefly, however, I address several areas in which I disagree with the majority.
In Lopez, the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 922(q), which banned the possession of firearms near schools. After delineating three categories of permissible legislation under the Commerce Clause,1 the Court determined that only the third category provided an arguable basis for the statute. Lopez, — U.S. at-, 115 S.Ct. at 1630. Even under that category, the statute faded because the regulated activity was not connected with a commercial transaction affecting interstate commerce in the aggregate, and the statute did *788not contain a jurisdictional element otherwise limiting its reach to activities connected to interstate commerce. Id.
Because of the similarity between § 922(q) and § 922(o) in that each bans the mere possession of certain firearms, it would seem natural to evaluate § 922(o) under the third Lopez category. Instead of adhering to the framework suggested by Lopez, however, the majority strains the limits of the first two categories to buttress its decision. Attempting to bring § 922(o) within the first Lopez category, it indicates that prosecution under § 922(o) necessarily involves an illegal transfer implicating the channels of interstate commerce. This view overlooks the plain language of the statute, which clearly allows prosecution for mere possession of a machine gun. Suggesting that the second category is appropriate, the majority opines that Congress must have found that machine guns are “things in interstate commerce” which Congress sought to regulate because of their effect on interstate commerce. The only support offered for these purported congressional findings, however, is legislative history imported from other firearm statutes. Reliance on the legislative history of a statute is a tenuous enough interpretive technique— reliance on the history of other statutes is an even more perilous undertaking. There is simply no evidence in the legislative history of § 922(o) of a Congressional determination that possession of machine guns necessarily implicates interstate commerce.
Turning to the third Lopez category, the majority concludes that machine guns have a substantial relation to interstate commerce simply because they “travel in interstate commerce, posing a threat to local law enforcement, which has a disruptive effect on interstate commerce.” This reasoning would be potentially persuasive save its express rejection in Lopez. Like § 922(q), § 922(o) as applied to possession “has nothing to do with ‘commerce’ or any sort of economic enterprise.” Id. at-, 115 S.Ct. at 1630-31. The majority does not attempt to distinguish its analysis under the third Lopez category precisely because of the difficulty of doing so. To fill the void, it relies on a thaumatrope of alternating references to the three Lopez categories to create the illusion that all three are satisfied.
Although the majority’s approach is consistent with the other circuits that have upheld the statute, we are not constrained to follow their views if, in our opinion, they are based on incomplete or incorrect analysis. Nixon v. Kent County, 76 F.3d 1381, 1388 (6th Cir.1996) (en banc).
Accepting the obvious parallels between § 922(q) as discussed in Lopez and § 922(o), I would hold that the only correct analysis is under the third category. Under the third category, § 922(o) should fail ultimately for the same reason § 922(q) failed in Lopez: the absence of a requirement that possession have a concrete tie to interstate commerce. Id. at-, 115 S.Ct. at 1631. Despite my agreement with the majority on the wisdom of regulating such destructive weapons, we are not free to ignore the Supreme Court’s warning against “convert[ing] congressional authority under the Commerce Clause to a general police power of the sort retained by the States.” Id. at-, 115 S.Ct. at 1634.
I therefore respectfully dissent.

. The three categories of permissible Commerce Clause legislation under Lopez are: (1) regulation of "the use of the channels of interstate commerce"; (2) regulation and protection of "the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, or persons or things in interstate commerce, even though the threat may come only from intrastate activities”; and (3) regulation of “those activities having a substantial relation to interstate commerce." Lopez,-U.S. at-, 115 S.Ct. at 1629-30.