Court Opinion

ID: 9426237
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:17:13.798819+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:59.745660
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice White,
concurring.
In meeting petitioner’s contention that Tot v. United States, 319 U. S. 463 (1943), necessarily confines the offense created by 18 U. S. C. § 922 (h) to the receipt of a firearm in the course of an interstate shipment, the Court reads the Tot opinion as reciting but not adopting the lower courts’ holdings that § 2 (f) of the Federal Firearms Act of 1938 did not cover the intrastate receipt of a firearm that previously had moved in interstate commerce. Ante, at 221-222. I join the Court in this respect. Also, I find its construction of § 922 (h) to be correct even if it is assumed, as Mr. Justice Stewart concludes, post, at 228-230, and n. 3, that the Tot decision did adopt the more limited construction of § 2 (f).
Section 2 (f) of the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, 52 Stat. 1251, at issue in Tot, read as follows:
“It shall be unlawful for any person who has been convicte'd of a crime of violence or is a fug[i]tive from justice to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce, and the possession of a firearm or ammunition by any such person shall be presumptive evidence that such firearm or ammuni*226tion was shipped or transported or received, as the case may be, by such person in violation of this Act.”
The opening words of the section broadly describing the statutory violation as receiving a firearm which “has been shipped or transported” in interstate commerce were immediately followed by a provision that it could be presumed from possession alone that the defendant-possessor had personally participated in the interstate movement of the possessed firearm. Had Congress intended to proscribe the mere intrastate receipt by a defendant of a gun which had previously moved in interstate commerce without any involvement by the defendant in that movement, there would have been little or no reason to provide that his personal participation in the interstate movement could be inferred from his possession alone. Proof of personal possession and previous interstate movement independent of any act of the defendant, which would be sufficient to make out intrastate receipt of a firearm which had previously moved in interstate commerce, requires no such presumptive assistance.
In this light it is not surprising that the otherwise broad language of the statute, which was not limited-to receipts that were themselves part of the interstate movement, was nonetheless understood to reach only receipts directly involved in interstate commerce. Tot v. United States, supra, it is argued, so understood the statute. Striking down the presumption did not remove this gloss from the language defining the violation. Thus after Tot, and as long as Congress left § 2 (f) intact, to establish a violation of § 2 (f) it was necessary to prove that a convicted felon found in possession of a firearm actually participated in an interstate shipment.
When § 922 (h) was enacted, however, Congress *227omitted the presumptive language of the prior statute and removed any basis for reading the plain language of the statute to reach only receipts of firearms which have moved in interstate commerce with the aid or participation of the defendant. That the plain language of § 922 (h) contains no limitation to receipts which are themselves part of an interstate movement is not disputed. Instead the argument is that by reenacting the initial language of § 2 (f) Congress intended to maintain the restricted meaning even though it dropped the presumption which had provided the gloss and added nothing in its stead.
It is noted that Congress was aware that after Tot, “in order to establish a violation of this statute, it is necessary to prove that a convicted felon found in possession of a firearm actually received it in the course of an interstate shipment.”* From this it is inferred that in enacting § 922 (h) Congress adopted Tot’s interpretation of the glossed language of §2(f). But the quoted statement simply describes the continuing effect of the gloss provided by the language of the invalidated presumption in § 2 (f). Congressional awareness of the effect of Tot does not overcome the concededly plain language of § 922 (h) or the force of the Court’s analysis of the statutory scheme of which it is a part. Ante, afc 216-219. Indeed I find that congressional understanding of the history of § 2 (f), first with and then without its presumption, supports the Court’s determination that § 922 (h) “covers the intrastate receipt ... of a firearm *228that previously had moved in interstate commerce.” Ante, at 225.

Hearings on S. 1, Amendment 90 to S. 1, S. 1853, and S. 1854 before Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., 46 (1967). See also Hearings on H.R. 5037, H. R. 5038, H. R. 5384, H. R. 5385, and H. R. 5386 before Subcommittee No. 5 of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., 561 (1967).