Court Opinion

ID: 9460163
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:43:41.982319+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:30.736282
License: Public Domain

WILLIAM J. CAMPBELL, Senior District Judge
(concurring).
■ I reluctantly concur in reversing the dismissal of this indictment, and do so only because I consider United States v. Bass, 404 U.S. 336, 92 S.Ct. 515, 30 L.Ed.2d 488 (1971) as allowing no other result under the facts here presented. In Bass, “the Government proceeded on the assumption that § 1202(a)(1) bans all possessions and receipts of firearms by convicted felons, and that no connection with interstate commerce had to be demonstrated in individual cases.” 404 U.S. at 338, 92 S.Ct. at 517. Applying principles of statutory construction, the Court held the phrase “in commerce or affecting commerce” related not only to conduct involving transportation of firearms, but also to instances in which the defendant is charged with either receiving or possessing firearms.
Mr. Justice Marshall, speaking for the Court, then continued:
“There is a second principle supporting today’s result: unless Congress conveys its purpose clearly, it will not be deemed to have significantly changed the federal-state balance. . . . In traditionally sensitive areas, such as legislation affecting the federal balance, the requirement of clear statement assures that the legislature has in fact faced, and intended to bring into issue, the critical matters involved in the judicial decision. In the instant case, the broad construction urged by the Government renders traditionally local criminal conduct a matter of federal enforcement and would also involve a substantial extension of federal police resources. Absent proof of some interstate commerce nexus in each case, § 1202(a) dramatically intrudes upon traditional state criminal jurisdiction. Absent a clearer statement of intention from Congress than is present here, we do not interpret § 1202(a) to reach the ‘mere possession’ of firearms.”
Mr. Justice Brennan’s brief concurring opinion indicates that he would have said no more, and had Mr. Justice Marshall done so, I would affirm the district court’s dismissal of this indictment. However, the Court’s opinion continues with the statement that “we conclude that the Government meets its burden here [i. e., with respect to the offense of “receiving” a firearm] if it demonstrates that the firearm received has previously traveled in interstate commerce.18” 404 U.S. at 350, 92 S.Ct. 523. Footnote 18 of the Opinion advises that “this reading preserves a significant difference between the ‘receipt’ offenses of Title IV and Title VII. See supra at 342-343.” At page 343, 92 S.Ct. at page 520 of the Opinion, the Court notes that, unlike § 1202(a), Title IV is “limited to the sending or receiv*1359ing of firearms as part of an interstate transportation.” See also, footnote 10, 404 U.S. at 343, 92 S.Ct. at 520.
This “significant difference” leads to only one conclusion: that if a firearm has ever traveled in interstate commerce previous to the time defendant “receives” it, his receipt of that firearm is proscribed by § 1202(a)(1), even if the defendant’s receipt of the weapon involved a wholly intrastate transaction.
While this conclusion is dictated by the specific language of the Bass decision, I find its implications entirely inconsistent with all that Justice Marshall had to say regarding the need for a “clearer statement of intention from Congress” before the court would construe § 1202(a) as requiring no “interstate commerce nexus in each case”, a statutory construction which, in the Court’s view, “dramatically intrudes on traditional state jurisdiction.” It is difficult to conceive of an instance in which a person charged with possession of a firearm may not also be charged with receiving it. And if all the Government need demonstrate is that the “firearm received has previously traveled in interstate commerce”, § 1202(a) effectively proscribes virtually all acts involving possession or receipt of firearms by a person previously convicted of a felony. If the defendant is charged with having received the weapon in any state other than the state wherein it was manufactured, the firearm will necessarily have previously traveled in interstate commerce.
The fortuitous circumstances which would have to exist to render § 1202(a)(1) inapplicable are so unlikely that, in practice, the statute “renders traditionally local criminal conduct a matter of federal enforcement”, a change in the “federal-state balance” which Justice Marshall had indicated would not be recognized “absent a clearer statement of intention from Congress”.