256
Opinion of Stevens, J.
and the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, as interpreted in cases like In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358 (1970), and Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U. S. 275 (1993), it is clear that the Court of Appeals decided an important constitutional question. Given our tradition of avoiding the unnecessary or premature adjudication of such questions, see, e. g., New York City Transit Authority v. Beazer, 440 U. S. 568, 582- 583 (1979), we first consider whether the trial judge failed to give the jury an adequate instruction on the mens rea element of the offense.
II
Count 2 of the indictment charged that petitioner "knowingly" possessed an unregistered firearm, and Count 3 charged that he "knowingly" possessed a firearm that was not properly identified by a serial number. The trial judge denied petitioner's request for an instruction that defined the Government's burden of establishing " 'knowing possession' " as proof that "the defendant willfully and consciously possessed items which he knew to be 'firearms.' " App. 12. Apparently assuming that our holding in Staples required such an instruction, the Court of Appeals concluded that the trial judge's denial "effectively omitted from the instructions an essential element of the crime charged under § 5861(d)." 94 F. 3d, at 1524. For two reasons, we believe this assumption was unwarranted.
First, the tendered instruction was ambiguous. It might have been interpreted to require proof that the defendant knew that his silencer was a "firearm" as defined by the federal statute, not merely that the item possessed certain offending characteristics. Second, and of greater importance, a fair reading of the instructions as actually given did require the jury to find that petitioner knew that he possessed a silencer.
In his objections to the instruction that the trial judge originally proposed as a definition of the § 5861(d) offense
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