Cite as: 511 U. S. 600 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
supra, at 565, that put their owners on notice that they stand "in responsible relation to a public danger," Dotterweich, 320 U. S., at 281.
The Government protests that guns, unlike food stamps,
but like grenades and narcotics, are potentially harmful devices.5 Under this view, it seems that Liparota's concern for criminalizing ostensibly innocuous conduct is inapplicable whenever an item is sufficiently dangerous—that is, dangerousness alone should alert an individual to probable regulation and justify treating a statute that regulates the dangerous device as dispensing with mens rea. But that an item is "dangerous," in some general sense, does not necessarily suggest, as the Government seems to assume, that it is not also entirely innocent. Even dangerous items can, in some cases, be so commonplace and generally available that we would not consider them to alert individuals to the likelihood of strict regulation. As suggested above, despite their potential for harm, guns generally can be owned in perfect innocence. Of course, we might surely classify certain categories of guns—no doubt including the machineguns, sawed-off shotguns, and artillery pieces that Congress has subjected to
5 The dissent's assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, the Government's position, "[a]ccurately identified," post, at 632, is precisely that "guns in general" are dangerous items. The Government, like the dissent, cites Sipes v. United States, 321 F. 2d 174, 179 (CA8), cert. denied, 375 U. S. 913 (1963), for the proposition that a defendant's knowledge that the item he possessed "was a gun" is sufficient for a conviction under § 5861(d). Brief for United States 21. Indeed, the Government argues that "guns" should be placed in the same category as the misbranded drugs in Dotterweich and the narcotics in Balint because " 'one would hardly be surprised to learn' (Freed, 401 U. S. at 609) that there are laws that affect one's rights of gun ownership." Brief for United States 22. The dissent relies upon the Government's repeated contention that the statute requires knowledge that "the item at issue was highly dangerous and of a type likely to be subject to regulation." Id., at 9. But that assertion merely patterns the general language we have used to describe the mens rea requirement in public welfare offenses and amounts to no more than an assertion that the statute should be treated as defining a public welfare offense.
611
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