Cite as: 511 U. S. 600 (1994)
Stevens, J., dissenting
We thus have read a knowledge requirement into public welfare crimes, but not a requirement that the defendant know all the facts that make his conduct illegal. Although the Court acknowledges this standard, it nevertheless concludes that a gun is not the type of dangerous device that would alert one to the possibility of regulation.
Both the Court and Justice Ginsburg erroneously rely upon the "tradition[al]" innocence of gun ownership to find that Congress must have intended the Government to prove knowledge of all the characteristics that make a weapon a statutory "firear[m]." Ante, at 610-612; ante, at 621-622 (Ginsburg, J., concurring in judgment). We held in Freed, however, that a § 5861(d) offense may be committed by one with no awareness of either wrongdoing or of all the facts that constitute the offense.14 401 U. S., at 607-610. Nevertheless, the Court, asserting that the Government "gloss[es] over the distinction between grenades and guns," determines that "the gap between Freed and this case is too wide to bridge." Ante, at 610. As such, the Court instead reaches the rather surprising conclusion that guns are more analogous to food stamps than to hand grenades.15 Even if
14 Freed, 401 U. S., at 607 (holding that a violation of § 5861(d) may be established without proof that the defendant was aware of the fact that the firearm he possessed was unregistered). Our holding in Freed is thus squarely at odds with the Court's conclusion that the "defendant must know the facts that make his conduct illegal," ante, at 619.
15 The Court's and Justice Ginsburg's reliance upon Liparota v. United States, 471 U. S. 419 (1985), is misplaced. Ante, at 610-612; ante, at 621-622. Although the Court is usually concerned with fine nuances of statutory text, its discussion of Liparota simply ignores the fact that the food stamp fraud provision, unlike § 5861(d), contained the word "knowingly." The Members of the Court in Liparota disagreed on the proper interpretation. The dissenters accepted the Government's view that the term merely required proof that the defendant had knowledge of the facts that constituted the crime. See Liparota, 471 U. S., at 442-443 (White, J., dissenting) ("I would read § 2024(b)(1) . . . to require awareness of only the relevant aspects of one's conduct rendering it illegal, not the
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