Cite as: 524 U. S. 308 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
Under the Government's approach, a state weapons limitation on an offender activates the uniform federal ban on possessing any firearms at all. This is so even if the guns the offender possessed were ones the State permitted him to have. The State has singled out the offender as more dangerous than law-abiding citizens, and federal law uses this determination to impose its own broader stricture.
Although either reading creates incongruities, petitioner's approach yields results contrary to a likely, and rational, congressional policy. If permission to possess one firearm entailed permission to possess all, then state permission to have a pistol would allow possession of an assault weapon as well. Under this view, if petitioner, in violation of state law, had possessed a handgun, the unless clause would still not apply because he could have possessed a rifle. Not only would this strange result be inconsistent with any conceivable federal policy, but it also would arise often enough to impair the working of the federal statute. Massachusetts, in this case, and some 15 other States choose to restore civil rights while restricting firearm rights in part. The permissive reading would make these partial restrictions a nullity under federal law, indeed in the egregious cases with the most dangerous weapons. Congress cannot have intended this bizarre result.
Under petitioner's all-or-nothing argument, federal law would forbid only a subset of activities already criminal under state law. This limitation would contradict the intent of Congress. In Congress' view, existing state laws "provide less than positive assurance that the person in question no longer poses an unacceptable risk of dangerousness." Dickerson, 460 U. S., at 120. Congress meant to keep guns away from all offenders who, the Federal Government feared, might cause harm, even if those persons were not deemed dangerous by States. See id., at 119. If federal law is to provide the missing "positive assurance," it must reach primary conduct not covered by state law. The need
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