Miсhael Peters appeals his conviction after a jury trial for sale of a firearm and ammunition to a convicted felon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(d)(1) and 924(a)(2). Peters argues that the district court improperly denied his motion for judgment of acquittal, and that § 922(d) is an unconstitutional exercise of Congress’ commerce power. Because sufficient evidence was presented at trial for the jury to conclude that Peters knowingly sold a firearm and ammunition to a convicted felon, we affirm the district court’s denial of Peters’ motion for judgment of acquittal. In addition, because banning the sale of firearms to felons falls within the scope of Congress’ commerce power, we affirm Peters’ conviction.
I.
The story begins in April 2002, when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (“ATF”) began an investigation of Michael Peters, one-time owner and operator of MRM Outdoor Sports and Police Supplies (“MRM”) in Branford, Florida. MRM sold firearms, among other things, and Peters was a federally licensed firearms dealer from 1994 until his license expired in April 2001. ATF Agent Nick Chereme-ta had seen Peters at gun shows and knew that he was no longer a licensed firearms dealer. Accordingly, he employed a confidential informant to determine whether Peters was still selling guns out of his store.
The confidential informant, Harley Edward St. John, was born Gary Bruce Wilson and, prior to his entry into the Federal Witness Protection Program in 1991, had used a number of other aliases, including Charles Jerome Wilson and Ed Feagin. On November 19, 1991, under the name Ed Feagin, St. John was convicted of one count of felony aggravated assault in the Superior Court of Tattnall County, Georgia. Upon entering into the Federal Witness Protection Program in 1991, St. John was given his new name and assigned a new social security number, although he kept his actual birth date of October 26, 1951. The names Gary Bruce Wilson, Charles Jеrome Wilson, Ed Feagin, and Harley Edward St. John also share a single FBI number. When St. John left the witness protection program in 1995, he kept his new name.
Acting as a confidential informant for ATF, St. John made a total of seven contacts with the defendant Peters, all of which he tape recorded. St. John’s first contact with Peters was on April 11, 2002, when Agent Cheremeta sent him into Peters’ store to buy a box of ammunition. St. John talked with Peters at some length, making no mention of his felony conviction, before purchasing -the -ammunition.
On May 9, 2002, Agent Cheremeta instructed St. John to call Peters to discuss local gun shows. After learning that Peters planned to attend a gun show on May 26, Agent Cheremeta sent St. John to that show to buy two firearms from Peters. After browsing Peters’ merchandise, St. John inquired whether he could make a purchase “without a background,” to which Peters replied, “Yup. This is all my personal stuff.” St. John explained, “my old lady kind of flung something on me last year, you know how that shit goes and I don’t want to — ,” at which point Peters interjected, “Dude, get it cleaned off.” Without providing identification, St. John then purchased from Peters a .34-caliber pistol and a 12-gauge shotgun.-
*1266 St. John contacted Peters again on June 13 to ask about several of his guns, and told Peters that he would see him at the gun show the upcoming Saturday. At that show, on June 15, St. John said to Peters that gun shows made him “nervous as hell” because of his “damn felony conviction.” Peters responded, “I thought that wasn’t a conviction you said, they, they gave you a [inaudible] judgment you said.” St. John then purchased two semi-automatic pistols from Peters, again without showing any identification, before returning to the topic of his trouble with his “old lady.” Peters suggested that “it might be fixed by now,” to which St. John replied, “They don’t take that shit off.” Peters assured him, “Yeah they do,” and St. John told him, “A felony conviction, they don’t do [sic] take that off.” Peters commented, “I thought you said it was a domestic violеnce charge,” and St. John explained, “No, I said it was the old lady, you know what I mean. And it’s bullshit, she Goddamn set up the — all I did was grab that — she’s hauling ass out the door and I cut the Goddamn tire and they charged me with [inaudible].” Peters asked, “assault on a vehicle?” and St. John responded, “no — on her.” St. John also informed Peters that he had received the conviction three years earlier, in Georgia. Peters asked, “are you sure it was a felony conviction? ... Cause I thought it was a domestic violence thing we were talking about before.” St. John mentioned attempting to get his rights restored, and Peters advised him to “[p]ay a couple of hundred bucks to an [attorney, fill out the paperwork, go through the procedures, it’s worth it.” Peters referred him to an attorney whom Peters said had helped an acquaintance of his get his rights restored after his conviction for a drug offense.
On June 26, 2002, St. John again called Peters to inquire about severаl more guns. Peters gave St. John directions to his store, and St. John mentioned that he had left a message for the attorney Peters had recommended. Two days later, on June 28, 2002, St. John visited Peters’ store. St. John also mentioned again that he was having ■ difficulty contacting- the attorney, and explained that he wanted to follow up with her, because “[i]f she gets that felony conviction off of me then ... I can do what the hell I want ... [and] I don’t have to worry about a bunch of bullshit.” Peters suggested that St. John’s offense “should have been a misdemeanor in- the first place.” The two discussed St. John’s conviction for several minutes, and then St. John purchased an AR-15 and a case of ammunition from Peters, again without showing identification.
Peters and St. John had no subsequent meetings. However, on September 17, 2002, ATF agents executed searches of both Peters’ residence and his business premises. These searches turned up no illegal firearms or other cоntraband.
On December 18, 2002, a federal grand jury in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida indicted Peters on two counts of selling firearms and ammunition to a convicted felon — on June 15, 2002, and June 28, 2002, respectively — in violation of 18 U.S.C. -§§ 922(d)(1) and 922(a)(2).
At trial, the government introduced transcripts of the conversations between Peters :and St. John, all of which had been recorded. The government also introduced testimony from Matthew Scott Robinson, a local police officer working with ATF. Robinson testified that he was conducting surveillance at the June 15 gun show, and did not see St. John show Peters any identification before making his purchase.
Agent Cheremeta testified about the details of ATF’s investigation of Peters. He explained, among other things, that ATF had instructed St. John to mention to Peters a possible problem with his back *1267 ground, but not to give any specifies until the June 15 gun show. Cheremeta denied, however, instructing St. John to mislead Peters about his сonviction. According to Cheremeta, when he ran a background check through the National Crime Information Center (“NCIC”), it revealed St. John’s prior conviction. On cross-examination, however, Cheremeta admitted that he had conducted the NCIC search using St. John’s birth name, Gary Wilson, and had not run the name St. John.
The government rested its case, and Peters moved for judgment of acquittal, arguing that the government had not established that Peters was aware of St. John’s conviction. The court denied the motion.
Peters then testified on his own behalf. He explained that he let his federal firearms license expire in April 2001 because he had decided to close his store and become a mortgage broker. The defendant said that after the expiration of his license, he took his excess firearm inventory home to sell privately through trade shows and over the internet. He acknowledged that as a licensed firearms dealer, he had been required to conduct background checks of potential purchasers, but that no checks are required when the seller is a private individual.
Peters further testified that St. John had produced a Florida driver’s license bearing the name Harley St. John when he made his initial firearm purchase from Peters on May 26, 2002. As to St. John’s story about trouble with his wife, Peters explained that he had assumed St. John was referring only to a domestic violence temporary restraining order. Peters also stated that after this conversation, he conducted a background check, using the name Harley St. John and the address and date of birth on the driver’s license St. John had produced, to search public records available on the internet, including the web sites of the Georgia and Florida departments of corrections, the Bradford and Duval County sheriffs’ offices, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigations. Peters found no record of any conviction under the name Harley St. John in any of these sources. He acknowledged that if he had been a licensed dealer, he would have checked other sites, including NCIC.
As to St. John’s mention of a prior felony conviction at the June 15, 2002 gun show, Peters testified that he thought St. John was simply confused about a prior domestic violence restraining order and was making a big deal out of nothing. Peters stated that he would not have sold firearms to St. John if he had reason to believe that St. John had a prior felony conviction. Peters explained that St. John’s confusion about the nature of the charges, what he had been convicted of, and whether he had served any jail time, as well as the fact that Peters’ own searches had revealed no record of any conviction, led Peters to believe that St. John had no prior felony conviction.
Peters also offered the testimony of Charles Meacham, a licensed private investigator familiar with conducting background checks. Meacham stated that he ran a check of Harley St. John on all available public databases and found no felony convictions. Meacham also confirmed that the NCIC database is not accessible by the public.
Peters called a final character witness to establish his reputation for truthfulness, and then rested his case. The government presented no rebuttal case. Peters then renewed his motion for judgment of acquittal, which the court denied. The jury acquitted Peters on the first count of the indictment — the June 15 sale — and convicted him on the second — the June 28 sale. At sentencing, the district court granted Peters’ motion for a downward departure from the Guidelines range, and *1268 sentenced him to .three years’- probation and nine months’ home detention. Peters now appeals his conviction.
II.
. Peters’ first argument on appeal is that the district court erred in denying his motion for judgment of acquittal, since the evidence presented at trial was legally insufficient to establish either that St. John actually had a prior felony conviction, or that Peters knew or had reasonable cause to know of such a conviction.
Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 29(a) states, in pertinent part: “After the government closes its evidence or after the close of all the evidence, the court on the defendant’s motion must enter a judgment of acquittal of any offense for which the evidence is insufficient to sustain a conviction.” Fed.R.Crim.P. 29(a).
We review the denial of a motion for judgment of acquittal
de novo. United States v. Bowman,
Title 18 U.S.C. § 922(d) states, in pertinent part: “It shall be unlawful for any person to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person — (1) is under indictment for, or has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year ....” 18 U.S.C. § 922(d). Moreover, § 924(a)(2) provides: ' “Whoever knowingly violates subsection (a)(6), (d), (g), (h), (i), (j), or (o) of section 922 shall be fined as provided in this title, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.” 18 U.S.C. § 924(a)(2). Accordingly, to prove its case against Peters for violating § 922(d)(1), the government needed to establish beyond a reasonable doubt (1) that Peters sold a firearm; (2) that the purchaser, St. John, was a convicted felon; and (3) that Peters knew or had reasonable cause to believe that St. John had a prior felony conviction. See 11th Cir. Pattern Jury Instruction (Criminal), 34.5.
Peters admits the first element — that he sold a firearm — but challenges the second and third.- As to the second element, Peters contends that the government failed to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Ed Feagin — whose felony conviction the government introduced at trial- — was the same person as Harley St. John. As to the third element, Peters claims that the background check he performed on St. John, as well as St. John’s apparent confusion regarding the details of his conviction, establish that the government failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Pe *1269 ters knew or had reason to believe that St. John was a convicted felon. We are persuaded by neither argument.
Regarding the second element of the offense — that the purchaser is a convicted felon — the government’s evidence was more than sufficient for the jury to conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Harley St. John and Ed Feagin are indeed the same person, and thus that St. John is in fact a convicted felon. St. John himself testified that he and the Ed Feagin named in the 1991 Georgia judgment of conviction for one count of felony aggravated assault introduced at trial are one and the same. Indeed, when the government introduced the judgment of conviction as its Exhibit 16, St. John identified it аs his own conviction. Moreover, as Agent Cheremeta’s trial testimony revealed, law enforcement records — including the NCIC database— list St. John and Feagin (along with St. John’s other aliases, Gary Wilson, Bruce Wilson, and Charles Wilson) — as being one person. Agent Cheremeta stated, all of these individuals are assigned the same FBI number. Moreover, Peters offered no evidence whatsoever to refute the evidential foundation that St. John and Feagin are the same person. Simply put, the jury could reasonably conclude that St. John’s own acknowledgment, coupled with the testimony of Agent Cheremeta, established beyond a reasonable doubt that St. John was indeed a convicted felon.
As to the third element of the offense— whether Peters knew or had reasonable cause to believe that St. John was a convicted felon — the jury’s verdict was similarly supported by sufficient evidence. Tracking Eleventh Circuit Pattеrn Jury Instruction (Criminal) 34.5, the district court properly instructed the jury that “[t]o have ‘reasonable cause to believe’ that someone is a convicted felon means to have knowledge of facts which, although not amounting to direct knowledge, would cause a reasonable person, knowing the same things, reasonably to conclude that the other person was a convicted felon.” The evidence indicating that Peters had such cause was ample.
Most significantly, St. John himself told Peters more than once that he had a prior felony conviction. St. John referred explicitly to his “felony conviction” at least three times during his interactions with Peters. First, at the June 15 gun show, St. John told Peters that gun shows made him nervous because of his “damn felony conviction.” Specifically, St. John said that he had been convicted in Georgia of “assault” on his “old lady.” During that same meeting at the gun show, St. John expressed his belief that his сonviction could not be removed from his record, stating, “A felony conviction, they don’t do [sic] take that off.” Finally, during his June 28 visit to Peters’ store — immediately preceding the firearms sale for which Peters was convicted — St. John reiterated that “[i]f [the attorney] gets that felony conviction off of me then ... I can do what the hell I want.”
Moreover, Peters and St. John had extended conversations about St. John’s conviction during both the June 15 gun show and St. John’s June 28 visit to Peters’ store. St. John repeatedly emphasized his desire to clear up his record, and Peters referred St. John to an attorney, explaining that she had helped an acquaintance of his get his rights restored after a drug conviction. In addition, even prior to stating outright that he was a convicted felon, St. John hinted at the problem with his criminal history, asking at the May 26 gun show whether Peters would sell him a firearm “without a background,” and explaining that, “my old lady kind of flung something on me last year.”
These exchanges — including at least three explicit references by St. John to his *1270 “felony conviction” — constitute sufficient evidence from which a reasonable jury could find that Peters had reasonable cause to believe that St. John had a prior felony conviction. Plainly, the jury was not required to believe Peters’ trial testimony that he thought St. John was simply confused about the nature of his offense, that he had run a background check that confirmed his belief that St. John had no felony conviction, or even that he had seen St. John’s Florida driver’s license.
Assessing witness credibility is uniquely the function of the trier of fact, and it is one that a court of appeals may not and should not endeavor to replicate based on the cold paper record before it. As we have observed previously, “the jury, hearing [the defendant’s] words and seeing his demeanor, was entitled to disbelieve [his] testimony and, in fact, to bеlieve the opposite of what [he] said.”
United States v. Rudisill,
Moreover, even if the jury believed everything Peters said, it nevertheless could have concluded that Peters’ multiple conversations with St. John about St. John’s prior offense — which St. John referred to repeatedly as a “felony conviction” — -gave Peters knowledge of facts that “would cause a reasonable person, knowing the same things, reasonably to conclude that the other person was a convicted felon.” 11th Cir. Model Jury Instruction (Criminal) 34.5. The jury may have simply concluded, based on the testimony and transcripts before it, that St. John’s insistence that he did have a prior felony conviction would have led a reasonable person to believe that he was in fact a convicted felon.
Again, a jury “is free to choose among reasonable constructions of the evidence,”
Montes-Cardenas,
III.
Peters also challenges his conviction on the ground that § 922(d)(1) exceeds Congress’ Commerce Clause power, since the statute regulates purely intrastate gun sales that individually have no substantial effect on commerce.
This is an argument that Peters has raised for the first time on appeal. Our review is therefore only for plain error.
See, e.g., United States v. Walker,
Because the sale of firearms to felons is an economic activity that substantially affects interstate commerce, we conclude that Congress acted within its commerce power in enacting § 922(d)(1), and thus thаt the district court committed no error in entering a judgment of conviction.
A.
We begin our review by recalling the important principle that “[d]ue respect for the decisions of a coordinate branch of Government demands that we invalidate a congressional enactment only upon a plain showing that Congress has exceeded its constitutional bounds.”
United States v. Morrison,
The Commerce Clause, Article I, § 8 of the United States Constitution, provides that “[t]he Congress shall have the Power ... To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” U.S. Const, art. I, § 8, els. 1 & 3.
Contemporary Commerce Clause jurisprudence acknowledges “three broad categories of activity that Congress may regulate under its commerce power.”
United States v. Lopez,
Our focus today is on this third category, since we have little trouble concluding that the sale of firearms to felons directly and substantially affects interstate commerce. 1 Accordingly, a brief synthesis *1272 of the precedents defining the eontempo-i*ary contours of this class of Commerce Clause enactments is in order.
To determine whether the third
Lopez
prong will accommodate a particular congressional enactment, “the proper test requires an analysis of whether the regulated activity ‘substantially affects’ interstate commerce.”
Lopez,
The first case to employ these factors was
United States v. Lopez,
in which the Supreme Court invalidated the Gun Free School Zones Act of 1990, 18 U.S.C. § 922(q), prohibiting the possession of a firearm within a thousand feet of a school. In concluding that the Act exceeded the scope of Congress’ commerce power, the Court first observed that “Section 922(q) is a criminal statute that by its terms has nothing to do with ‘commerce’ or any sort of economic enterprise.”
Lopez,
The Supreme Court reiterated the four
Lopez
factors in
United States v. Morrison,
applying them to invalidate Subtitle C of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, 42 U.S.C. § 13981, which created a federal civil cause of action for victims of gender-motivated acts of violence. That statute, the Court observed, neither regulated economic activity nor contained an express jurisdictional element. It was, however, supported ,by extensive congressional findings articulating the effects of gender-motivated violence on' the national economy.
Morrison,
The
Lopez
approach enumerates four factors essential to judicial review of congressional Commerce Clause enactments. To date, neither the Supreme Court nor our Court has treated any one of these four
Lopez/Morrison
factors as dispositive.
Morrison
identified them as “significant considerations” that “contributed to our decision” in
Lopez. Morrison,
Moreover, although neither
Lopez
nor
Morrison
was suсh a case, both of those cases make clear that when the challenged statute regulates activity that is plainly economic in nature, no jurisdictional hook or congressional findings may be needed to demonstrate that Congress properly exercised its commerce power. Indeed, we have stated previously that “laws aimed directly at economic activity are most likely to satisfy the substantial effects test,” since the regulation of economic activity occupies the very core of Congress’ commerce authority.
United States v. Olin Corp.,
As
Lopez
acknowledged, the Supreme Court has “upheld a wide variety of congressional Acts regulating intrastate economic activity,” based on its conclusion “that the activity substantially affected interstate commerce.”
Lopez,
B.
Section 922(d) makes it a crime knowingly “to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition” to a convicted fel *1274 on. § 922(d). Because the sale of firearms to felons is an economic activity that substantially affects interstate commerce, the first Lopez factor is a powerful indicator that Congress acted within its commerce power in enacting § 922(d).
Peters disputes the notion that the isolated firearm sale for’which he was convicted under § 922(d) could possibly have had a substantial effect on interstate commerce. We therefore reiterate here what is by now abundantly clear: the proper inquiry is whether “the ‘class of activities’ involved in the case” — not the individual instance of conduct — substantially affects commerce.
Olin,
Morrison
reinforced this point. While the Court cast real doubt on whether “aggregating the effects of any
noneconomic
activity” could establish a basis for sustaining a Commerce Clause enactment,
Congress may appropriately exercise its commerce power when “the activity sought to be regulated is commerce which concerns more States than one and has a real and substantial relation to the national interest.”
Heart of Atlanta,
Section 922(d) has its origins in Title TV of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, Pub.L. No. 90-351, 82 Stat. 225. Title IV established federal licensing requirements and other regulations on the nationwide traffic in firearms. Among these provisions was the predecessor to the current § 922(d), then codified *1275 as § 922(c), which stated, in pertinent part:
It shall be unlawful for any licensed importer, licensed manufacturer, or licensed dealer to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person, knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person is a fugitive from justice or is under indictment or has been convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year.
Congress made a number of specific findings explaining the need for the legislation. Section 901(a) declared “that there is a widespread traffic in firearms moving in or otherwise affecting interstate or foreign commerce, and that the existing Federal controls over such traffic do not adequately enable the States to control this traffic within their own borders through the exercise of their police power.” § 901(a)(1). Congress further found “that the ease with which any person can acquire firearms other than a rifle or shotgun (including criminals, juveniles ..., narcotics addicts, mental defectives, armed groups who would supplant the functions of duly constituted public authorities, and others whose possession of such weapons is similarly contrary to the public interest) is a significant factor in the prevalence of lawlessness and violent crime in the United States.” § 901(a)(2). Moreover, Congress determined “that only through adequate Federal control over interstate and foreign commerce in these weapons, and over all persons engaging in the business of importing, manufacturing, or dealing in them, can this grave problem be properly dealt with, and effective State and local regulation of this traffic be made possible.” § 901(a)(3) (emphasis added).
Several months after Title IV of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 was enacted, it was superseded by the Gun Control Act of 1968, Pub.L. No. 90-618, 82 Stat. 1213, which “was designed to strengthen the firearms provisions which had been enacted as part of the omnibus crime bill.” H.R.Rep. No. 90-1577, reprinted in 1968 U.S.C.C.A.N. 4410, 4412; see also id. at 4413. The Gun Control Act left the Omnibus Act largely intact, with two significant changes: it imposed restrictions on rifles and shotguns generally parallel to thоse that the Omnibus Act applied to handguns only; and it added provisions controlling interstate shipment of ammunition and sale of ammunition to juveniles. See id. The ban on firearm sales to felons was recodified in nearly identical language, again as § 922(c).
Although Congress deemed it “unnecessary” to include the Omnibus Act’s specific findings in the Gun Control Act, the legislative history to the Gun Control Act makes clear that the rationale remained precisely the same. The expanded statute’s purpose was “to strengthen Federal controls over interstate and foreign commerce in firearms and to assist the States effectively to regulate firearms traffic within their borders.” Id. at 4411.
The ban on firearm sales to felons was finally enacted in its current form as part of the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act of 1986, Pub.L. No. 99-308, 100 Stat. 449. The purpose of the amendment was to “close an existing loophole” by extending the ban, which previously applied only to federally licensed firearms dealers, to “all persons who transfer a firearm.” H.R.Rep. No. 99—495, reprinted in 1986 U.S.C.C.A.N. 1327, 1343, 1348. Accordingly, § 922(d) was enacted in its current form, which prohibits “any person” from knowingly selling a firearm to a felon. 2
*1276
We have little doubt that Congress, recognizing, the national nature of the economic market for firearms, acted within the bounds of its commerce authority .in addressing the problem of the sale and distribution of firearms to felons through federal legislation.
Morrison
observed that “[t]he Constitution requires a distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local.”
Morrison,
Our sister circuits have repeatedly upheld other pieces of federal firearms legislation based on the national character of the market for firearms.
See, e.g., United States v. Haney,
The efficacy of a eongressionally enacted federal ban on thе sale of firearms to felons — a supply-side restriction' — is reinforced by the codification of a complementary demand-side restriction prohibiting felons from possessing firearms. Title 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), whose constitutionality has been repeatedly upheld,
see, e.g., Scarborough v. United States,
As the Supreme Court has explained, in imposing this ban, “Congress sought to rule broadly to keep guns out of the hands of those who have demonstrated that they may not be trusted to possess a firearm without becoming a threat to society.”
Scarborough v. United States,
Section 922(d) is the flip side of this coin. By targeting the available supply of firearms to felons (the ban on sales), as well as the lawful demand for firearms among felons (the ban oh possession), Congress has created a mutually reinforcing regulatory framework. Moreover, because § 922(g) reaches only instances of possession “in or affecting commerce,” Congress intended § 922(d) “to reach transactions that are wholly intrastate ... on the theory that such transactions affect interstate commerce,”
Huddleston v. United States,
Finally, we observe that this case is readily distinguishable from
Lopez.
The sale or distribution of firearms to felons— even when the sales are carried out inside the borders of a single state — -are commercial transactions invariably occurring within a national firearms marketplace. In contrast, the purely possessory offense of carrying a-firearm within a thousand feet of a school is, by its very terms, a localized activity whose impact is felt within a limited geographic sphere, and whose regulation falls within the general police powers
*1278
reserved to the state. As we have observed previously, “[b]y prohibiting only the possession of guns within 1,000 feet of a school, Congress could not rationally have expected to substantially affect the manufacture, importation, and interstate transfer of firearms.”
Wright,
In contrast, selling a firearm to a felon is “an economic activity that might, through repetition elsewhere, substantially affect ... interstate commerce.”
Lopez,
We therefore join the Eighth Circuit— the only other court of appeals to address this question — in upholding § 922(d) as a valid exercise of Congress’ commerce power over the economic аctivity of distribution and sale of firearms nationwide.
See United States v. Monteleone,
IV.
Because the evidence presented at trial was sufficient for a reasonable jury to find all the elements of a violation of § 922(d)(1), we AFFIRM the district court’s denial of Peter’s motion for judgment of acquittal. Moreover, because Congress acted within its commerce power in enacting § 922(d)(1), the district court committed no error, let alone plain error, and we AFFIRM the conviction.
AFFIRMED.
Notes
. We need not and do not consider here whether § 922(d) might fall within another category of Congress' commerce power as well. The
Lopez
categories do not carve the commerce power into three neat slices, but simply represent an effort to synthesize more than a century of Commerce Clause enactments by grouping them in loose categories that are decidedly descriptive, rather than definitional. Consequently, it is often the case that more than one category will accommodate a given piece of legislation.
See, e.g., United States v. Haney,
. We look to the findings accompanying previous incarnations of this law in analyzing the current version, since § 922(d) "is closely in
*1276
tertwined with other federal gun legislation and ... Congress should not be required to rearticulate its old findings every time it adds an additional provision.”
United States v. Haney,
. Peters argues that we cannot sustain a statute that contains no jurisdictional element to ensure, cаse by case, that the conduct regulated substantially affects commerce. However, a panel of this Court has already "rejected the argument that
Lopez
requires Congress to place a jurisdictional element in every statute enacted pursuant to the Commerce Clause or to make formal legislative findings connecting the regulated activity to interstate commerce.”
Wright,