U.S. v. Kirk

Decision Date03 February 1997
Docket NumberNo. 94-50472,94-50472
PartiesUNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. William Joseph KIRK, Defendant-Appellant.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Richard L. Durbin, Jr., Asst. U.S. Attorney, Mark Randolph Stelmach, Assistant

U.S. Attorney, Office of the United States Attorney, San Antonio, TX, for plaintiff-appellee.

Edwin Gerald Morris, Morris & Florey, Austin, TX, for defendant-appellant.

Keith S. Hampton, Cynthia Lanning Hampton, Austin, TX, for Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, amicus curiae.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas; Sam Sparks, Judge.

Before POLITZ, Chief Judge, and KING, GARWOOD, JOLLY, HIGGINBOTHAM, DAVIS, JONES, SMITH, DUHE, WIENER, BARKSDALE, EMILIO M. GARZA, DeMOSS, BENAVIDES, * STEWART, PARKER and DENNIS, Circuit Judges.

Prior report: 70 F.3d 791

PER CURIAM:

By virtue of an equally divided en banc court, the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.

ROBERT M. PARKER, Circuit Judge, joined by POLITZ, Chief Judge, and KING, HIGGINBOTHAM, DAVIS, WIENER, STEWART and DENNIS, Circuit Judges, would affirm for the following reasons:

In my view, there was a rational basis for Congress to conclude that post-1986 incidents of manufacture, transfer, and possession of machineguns fall within its power to regulate interstate commerce. Every circuit that has examined 18 U.S.C. § 922(o)--both before and after United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 115 S.Ct. 1624, 131 L.Ed.2d 626 (1995)--has determined that § 922(o) does not exceed the authority granted to Congress by the Commerce Clause. 1

A careful reading of Lopez compels this conclusion. In Lopez, the Supreme Court held that Congress exceeded its Commerce Clause power by enacting § 922(q) which criminalizes possession of a firearm within 1000 feet of the grounds of a school, see § 921(a)(25), a small geographic area finitely circumscribed and related to education, a uniquely local concern. In contrast, the extensive history of federal firearm regulation and the national scope of § 922(o) distinguishes it from § 922(q). It is important to the understanding of Lopez that the Supreme Court intended to establish an outer limit to congressional authority, not to retreat from well-established Commerce Clause precedent. United States v. Kenney, 91 F.3d 884, 887 (7th Cir.1996). As Chief Justice Rehnquist noted, "[S]ome of our prior cases have taken long steps down that road, giving great deference to congressional action. The broad language in these opinions has suggested the possibility of additional expansion, but we decline here to proceed any further." Lopez, 514 U.S. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 1634.

Simply stated, I believe that we should join the other circuits in holding that Congress had a rational basis for concluding that the manufacture, transfer and possession of machineguns substantially affect commerce and § 922(o) therefore is constitutional.

PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge, joined by POLITZ, Chief Judge, and DAVIS and WIENER, Circuit Judges, would affirm for the following reasons:

We are persuaded that a legislative judgment that possession of machine guns acquired after 1986 has a substantial effect on interstate commerce, particularly by facilitating the trade in illegal drugs, is supported by our judicial experience and facts about machine guns and interstate criminal activity common to public discourse. Congress did not exceed its power under the Commerce Clause, and we today correctly affirm this conviction.

I.

This case ultimately turns on the role of congressional findings in judicial review of Lopez, then, adhered to a rational basis standard of review. This deferential standard does not insist that Congress actually make factual findings. To the contrary, its tolerance of hypothetical, judicially supposed purposes and means gives the rational basis standard its deferential character. Courts can assume a more activist role in judicial review by refusing to look to a basis for legislation not identified by Congress. This elevates the standard of review, according significantly less deference to Congress. Giving weight to the absence of congressional findings lies in the middle ground between an intrusive absolute insistence upon legislative findings and traditional rational basis inquiry. Congressional findings are not merely playthings of formalism. They help define the respective roles of the courts and the Congress and the federal and the state governments. So the role of findings demands our attention. But their absence does not end our inquiry. Here Congress made no findings. We give weight to the absence of findings, but we do not find their absence controlling. Under Lopez, we must continue to apply the rational basis test, which asks courts not to set aside congressional acts as exceeding the Commerce Clause power if the Congress could have found that the relevant intrastate activity has a substantial effect on interstate commerce. This deference respects differences between the fact-finding of courts and legislative findings, differences of a constitutional order. Legislative "findings," relative to judicial findings, are untidy in their blending of empirical assessment and policy judgments. The difference reflects the fundamentally different roles of the judiciary and the Congress. Congress must respond actively to problems faced by political communities; its judgment is accented by its look to the future and its effort to offer solutions to social ills. The judicial decision looks backward, responding to the limits of a case or controversy. We must not forget these differences in inquiring what the legislature rationally could have found. Losing sight of these differences risks a blurring of the respective roles of Congress and the courts, a difference the rational basis test is intended to respect. On the one hand, courts have a constitutional duty to scrutinize congressional actions to ensure that Congress stays within its constitutionally enumerated powers; "if Lopez means anything, it is that Congress's power under the Commerce Clause must have some limits." United States v. Rybar, 103 F.3d 273, 291 (3d Cir.1996) (Alito, J., dissenting). On the other hand, we must discipline our scrutiny to ensure that we are about the business of judicial review and not the business of social policy. Stated another way, respecting the policy-making role of majoritarian legislative bodies is not an empty recitation.

congressional exercises of its commerce power. Our opinion in United States v. Lopez, 2 F.3d 1342 (5th Cir.1993), aff'd, 514 U.S. 549, 115 S.Ct. 1624, 131 L.Ed.2d 626 (1995), stressed the absence of congressional findings of the relationship between Congress's regulation of guns near schools and its commerce power. We required that Congress justify its authority by findings. The Supreme Court affirmed our holding that Congress lacked authority to regulate possession of a gun in proximity to a school, but it did not adopt our rationale. Rather, the Court shied away from so direct an imposition of procedure upon the Congress. Nonetheless, the court did give weight to the absence of congressionally identified ties between the regulation and the commerce power. 514 U.S. at ---- - ----, 115 S.Ct. at 1631-32.

This familiar problem for rational basis review is especially awkward when the issue is whether an intrastate activity has a substantial effect on interstate commerce. Unless the Court follows Justice Thomas away from an effects test, see Lopez, 514 U.S. at ---- - ----, 115 S.Ct. at 1642-51 (Thomas, J., concurring), we cannot escape this difficulty. Justice Breyer's elaborate study of education, guns, and commerce will continue to be commonplace, despite the reality that judicial searches for data that might have supported a legislative finding raise the troubling prospect of the courts doing work the Congress ought to have done. See id. at ---- - ----, 115 S.Ct. at 1659-62 (Breyer, J., dissenting). And as Justice Souter has pointed out, the doctrine of clear statement offers no escape. See id. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 1655 (Souter, J., dissenting). What the

                Supreme Court will do with the meaning of "substantial effect" remains to be seen.  These plastic words may lessen deference to Congress by judicial demands for empirical evidence as well as normative valuations of state and federal "interests."   Regardless of that future, according weight to the absence of legislative findings in close cases fairly accommodates these competing interests.  Cases are at least close when courts feel the need to conduct elaborate empirical studies to determine whether the facts support exercise of the federal commerce power.  If the facts were not within our easy reach, this would be a close case indeed, and the absence of findings would then tilt the outcome.  This simply states a limit upon the role of the courts in their inquiries into whether there is a rational basis for a legislative judgment
                
II.

In executing the rational basis test, we turn to facts bearing on the relationship between possession of machine guns and interstate commerce. The prosecution has not aided our factual inquiry on this score. But the concern over machine guns was hardly exotic. To the contrary, concern over both the unique firepower of automatic weapons and the recent increase in their number was the subject of public discussion, as a simple repair to the popular press makes plain. That exercise also sheds light on the type of data and expert opinion available to the Congress. A 1985 article in a national weekly magazine alerted Americans to the dangerous proliferation of machine guns and reported that "[t]he MAC-10 has become the side arm of choice for 'cocaine cowboys' and other drug smugglers." Machine Gun U.S.A., NEWSWEEK, October 14, 1985, at 46. According to the article, American gun dealers imported an average of 55,000 machine...

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