Law for Business 10th Edition by James Barnes,Terry Dworkin,Eric Richards

Exercise 1

Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) secured a federal search warrant for Robert W. Stewart's residence. The ATF search turned up five machine guns. The machine guns had been machined and assembled by Stewart. He subsequently was charged and convicted of five counts of unlawful possession of a machine gun under a federal statute that makes it unlawful to "transfer or possess a machine gun." Stewart appealed his conviction for unlawful possession of the machine guns, claiming that the statute was an invalid exercise of Congress's commerce power. Specifically, he argued that the statute contained no jurisdictional requirement that the machine gun has traveled in or substantially affected interstate commerce. Can Congress, under its Commerce Clause power, prohibit the mere possession of homemade machine guns?