Jones v. United States, 529 U.S. 848, 11 (2000)

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858

JONES v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

1,000 feet of a school. The defendant in that case, a 12th-grade student, had been convicted for knowingly possessing a concealed handgun and bullets at his San Antonio, Texas, high school, in violation of the federal Act. Holding that the Act exceeded Congress' power to regulate commerce, the Court stressed that the area was one of traditional state concern, see 514 U. S., at 561, n. 3, 567; id., at 577 (Kennedy, J., concurring), and that the legislation aimed at activity in which "neither the actors nor their conduct has a commercial character," id., at 580 (Kennedy, J., concurring); id., at 560- 562 (opinion of the Court).

Given the concerns brought to the fore in Lopez, it is appropriate to avoid the constitutional question that would arise were we to read § 844(i) to render the "traditionally local criminal conduct" in which petitioner Jones engaged "a matter for federal enforcement." United States v. Bass, 404 U. S. 336, 350 (1971). Our comprehension of § 844(i) is additionally reinforced by other interpretive guides. We have instructed that "ambiguity concerning the ambit of criminal statutes should be resolved in favor of lenity," Rewis v. United States, 401 U. S. 808, 812 (1971), and that "when choice has to be made between two readings of what conduct Congress has made a crime, it is appropriate, before we choose the harsher alternative, to require that Congress should have spoken in language that is clear and definite," United States v. Universal C. I. T. Credit Corp., 344 U. S. 218, 221-222 (1952). We have cautioned, as well, that "unless Congress conveys its purpose clearly, it will not be deemed to have significantly changed the federal-state balance" in the prosecution of crimes. Bass, 404 U. S., at 349. To read § 844(i) as encompassing the arson of an owner-occupied private home would effect such a change, for arson is a paradigmatic common-law state crime. See generally Poulos, The Metamorphosis of the Law of Arson, 51 Mo. L. Rev. 295 (1986).

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