High court rules for gun owning

ASSOCIATED PRESS

People convicted of crimes overseas still can own guns in the United States, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday.

In a 5-3 decision, the court ruled in favor of Gary Sherwood Small of Pennsylvania. The court reasoned that U.S. law, which prohibits felons who have been convicted in “any court” from owning guns, applies only to domestic crimes.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing for the majority, said interpreting the law broadly to apply to foreign convictions would be unfair to defendants because procedural protections often are less applied in international courts. If Congress intended foreign convictions to apply, they can rewrite the law to say so specifically, he wrote.

“We have no reason to believe that Congress considered the added enforcement advantages flowing from inclusion of foreign crimes, weighing them against, say, the potential unfairness of preventing those with inapt foreign convictions from possessing guns,” Justice Breyer wrote.

He was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O’Connor, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

In a dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that Congress intended for foreign convictions to apply. “Any” court literally means any court, he wrote.

“Read naturally, the word ’any’ has an expansive meaning, that is, ’one or some indiscriminately of whatever kind,’” Justice Thomas said.

He was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy.

Mr. Small had answered “no” to the felony conviction question on a federal form when he bought a handgun in 1998, a few days after he was paroled from a Japanese prison for violating Japan’s weapons laws.

He was indicted in 2000 for lying on the form and for illegally owning two pistols and 335 rounds of ammunition. He later entered a conditional guilty plea pending the outcome of this case.

The Bush administration had asked the court to apply the statute to foreign convictions.

The ruling, which was divided mostly along ideological lines, created a bit of an anomalous result for the conservative Justices Scalia and Thomas, who generally oppose the expanded use of international law to support decisions interpreting the Constitution.

In their opinion, they stuck to their conservative philosophy of interpreting statutes according to their strict, “dictionary” meaning, rather than delving into a presumed intent of Congress. They also backed the pro-prosecution stance of the Bush administration.

But their dissent also embraced the notion that foreign law should be incorporated more deeply into the U.S. court system, with Justice Thomas calling it wrong that the majority opinion effectively required Congress to be specific anytime it wanted foreign law to apply.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist did not participate in deciding the case, which was heard in November when he was undergoing treatment for thyroid cancer.