MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court.Following our decision in Haynes v. United States, 390 U. S. 85, Congress revised the National Firearms Act with the view of eliminating the defects in it which were revealed in Haynes. [Footnote 1]At the time of Haynes "only weapons used principally by persons engaged in unlawful activities would be subjected to taxation."  Id. at  390 U. S. 87.  Under the Act, as amended, all possessors of firearms as defined in the Act [Footnote 2] Page 401 U. S. 603 are covered, except the Federal Government.  26 U.S.C. § 5841 (1964 ed., Supp. V).At the time of Haynes, any possessor of a weapon included in the Act was compelled to disclose the fact of his possession by registration at any time he had acquired possession, a provision which we held meant that a possessor must furnish potentially incriminating information which the Federal Government made available to state, local, and other federal officials.  Id. at  390 U. S. 95-100.  Under the present Act, [Footnote 3] only possessors who lawfully Page 401 U. S. 604 make, manufacture, or import firearms can and must register them; the transferee does not and cannot register.  It is, however, unlawful for any person "to receive or possess a firearm which is not registered to him in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record." [Footnote 4]At the time of Haynes, as already noted, there was a provision for sharing the registration and transfer information with other law enforcement officials.  Id. at  390 U. S. 97-100.  The revised statute explicitly states that no information or evidence provided in compliance with the registration or transfer provisions of the Act can be used, directly or indirectly, as evidence against the registrant or applicant"in a criminal proceeding with respect to a violation of law occurring prior to or concurrently with the filing of the application or registration, or the compiling of the records containing the information or evidence. [Footnote 5]  The scope of the privilege extends, of course, to the hazards of prosecution under state law for the same or similar offenses.  See Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1; Marchetti v. United States, 390 U. S. 39,  390 U. S. 54.  And the appellees, apparently fearful that the Act, as written, does not undertake to bar the use of federal filings in state prosecutions, urge that those risks are real in this case.  It is said that California statutes [Footnote 6] punish the possession of grenades, and that federal registration will incriminate appellees under that law."The Solicitor General, however, represents to us that no information filed is, as a matter of practice, disclosed to any law enforcement authority except as the fact of nonregistration may be necessary to an investigation or prosecution under the present Act.The District Court nonetheless granted the motion to dismiss on two grounds:  (1) the amended Act, like the Page 401 U. S. 605 version in Haynes, violates the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment, and (2) the conspiracy "to possess destructive devices" and the possession charged do not allege the element of scienter.  The case is here on direct appeal.  18 U.S.C. § 3731.  And see United States v. Spector, 343 U. S. 169; United States v. Nardello, 393 U. S. 286.IWe conclude that the amended Act does not violate the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which provides that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself."  As noted, a lawful transfer of a firearm may be accomplished only if it is already registered.  The transferor -- not the transferee -- does the registering.  The transferor pays the transfer tax and receives a stamp [Footnote 7] denoting payment which he affixes to the application submitted to the Internal Revenue Service.  The transferor must identify himself, describe the firearm to be transferred, and the name and address of the transferee.  In addition, the application must be supported by the photograph and fingerprints of the transferee and by a certificate of a local or federal law enforcement official that he is satisfied that the photograph and fingerprints are those of the transferee and that the weapon is intended for lawful uses. [Footnote 8]  Only after receipt of the approved application form is it lawful for the transferor to hand the firearm over to the transferee.  At that time, he is to give the approved application to the transferee. [Footnote 9]  As noted, the Solicitor General advises us that the information in the hands of Internal Revenue Service, as a matter of practice, is not available to state or other federal authorities Page 401 U. S. 606 and, as a matter of law, cannot be used as evidence in a criminal proceeding with respect to a prior or concurrent violation of law. [Footnote 10]The transferor -- not the transferee -- makes any incriminating statements.  True, the transferee, if he wants the firearm, must cooperate to the extent of supplying fingerprints and photograph.  But the information he supplies makes him the lawful, not the unlawful, possessor of the firearm.  Indeed, the only transferees who may lawfully receive a firearm are those who have not committed crimes in the past.  The argument, however, is that furnishing the photograph and fingerprints will incriminate the transferee in the future.  But the claimant is not confronted by "substantial and real,'" but merely "trifling or imaginary hazards of incrimination" -- first by reason of the statutory barrier against use in a prosecution for prior or concurrent offenses, and second by reason of the unavailability of the registration data, as a matter of administration, to local, state, and other federal agencies.  Marchetti v. United States, supra, at  390 U. S. 53-54.  Cf. Minor v. United States, 396 U. S. 87,  396 U. S. 94.  Since the state and other federal agencies never see the information, he is left in the same position as if he had not given it, but "had claimed his privilege in the absence of a . . . grant of immunity."  Murphy v. Waterfront Comm'n, 378 U. S. 52,  378 U. S. 79.  This, combined with the protection against use to prove prior or concurrent offenses, satisfies the Fifth Amendment requirements respecting self-incrimination. [Footnote 11]Appellees' argument assumes the existence of a periphery of the Self-Incrimination Clause which protects Page 401 U. S. 607 a person against incrimination not only against past or present transgressions but which supplies insulation for a career of crime about to be launched.  We cannot give the Self-Incrimination Clause such an expansive interpretation.Another argument goes to the question of entrapment.  But that is an issue for the trial, not for a motion to dismiss.IIWe also conclude that the District Court erred in dismissing the indictment for absence of an allegation of scienter.The Act requires no specific intent or knowledge that the hand grenades were unregistered.  It makes it unlawful for any person "to receive or possess a firearm which is not registered to him." [Footnote 12]  By the lower court decisions at the time that requirement was written into the Act, the only knowledge required to be proved was knowledge that the instrument possessed was a firearm.  See Sipes v. United States, 321 F.2d 174, 179, and cases cited.The presence of a "vicious will" or mens rea (Morissette v. United States, 342 U. S. 246,  342 U. S. 251) was long a requirement of criminal responsibility.  But the list of exceptions grew, especially in the expanding regulatory area involving activities affecting public health, safety, and welfare.  Id. at  342 U. S. 254. The statutory offense of embezzlement, borrowed from the common law where scienter was historically required, was in a different category. [Footnote 13]  Id. at  342 U. S. 260-261."[W]here Congress borrows terms of art in which are accumulated the legal tradition and meaning Page 401 U. S. 608 of centuries of practice, it presumably knows and adopts the cluster of ideas that were attached to each borrowed word in the body of learning from which it was taken and the meaning its use will convey to the judicial mind unless otherwise instructed."Id. at  342 U. S. 263.At the other extreme is Lambert v. California, 355 U. S. 225, in which a municipal code made it a crime to remain in Los Angeles for more than five days without registering if a person had been convicted of a felony.  Being in Los Angeles is not, per se, blameworthy.  The mere failure to register, we held, was quite"unlike the commission of acts, or the failure to act under circumstances that should alert the doer to the consequences of his deed."Id. at  355 U. S. 228.  The fact that the ordinance was a convenient law enforcement technique did not save it."Where a person did not know of the duty to register, and where there was no proof of the probability of such knowledge, he may not be convicted consistently with due process.  Were it otherwise, the evil would be as great as it is when the law is written in print too fine to read or in a language foreign to the community."Id. at  355 U. S. 229-230. Page 401 U. S. 609In United States v. Dotterweich, 320 U. S. 277,  320 U. S. 284, a case dealing with the imposition of a penalty on a corporate officer whose firm shipped adulterated and misbranded drugs in violation of the Food and Drug Act, we approved the penalty "though consciousness of wrongdoing be totally wanting."The present case is in the category neither of Lambert nor Morissette, but is closer to Dotterweich.  This is a regulatory measure in the interest of the public safety, which may well be premised on the theory that one would hardly be surprised to learn that possession of hand grenades is not an innocent act. [Footnote 14]  They are highly dangerous offensive weapons, no less dangerous than the narcotics involved in United States v. Balint, 258 U. S. 250,  258 U. S. 254, where a defendant was convicted of sale of narcotics against his claim that he did not know the drugs were covered by a federal act.  We say with Chief Justice Taft in that case:"It is very evident from a reading of it that the emphasis of the section is in securing a close supervision of the business of dealing in these dangerous drugs by the taxing officers of the Government and that it merely uses a criminal penalty to secure recorded evidence of the disposition of such drugs as a means of taxing and restraining the traffic.  Its manifest purpose is to require every person dealing in drugs to ascertain at his peril whether that which he sells comes within the inhibition of the statute, Page 401 U. S. 610 and if he sells the inhibited drug in ignorance of its character, to penalize him.  Congress weighed the possible injustice of subjecting an innocent seller to a penalty against the evil of exposing innocent purchasers to danger from the drug, and concluded that the latter was the result preferably to be avoided."Id. at  258 U. S. 253-254.Reversed
U.S. Supreme CourtUnited States v. Freed, 401 U.S. 601 (1971)United States v. FreedNo. 345Argued January 11, 1971Decided April 5, 1971401 U.S. 601SyllabusIn Haynes v. United States, 390 U. S. 85, the Court held invalid under the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment provisions of the National Firearms Act, which constituted parts of an interrelated statutory scheme for taxing certain classes of firearms primarily used for unlawful purposes, and made the potentially incriminating information available to state and other officials.  To eliminate the defects revealed by Haynes, Congress amended the Act so that only a possessor who lawfully makes, manufactures, or imports firearms can and must register them.  The transferor must identify himself, describe the firearm, and give the name and address of the transferee, whose application must be supported by fingerprints and a photograph and a law enforcement official's certificate identifying them as those of the transferee and stating that the weapon is intended for lawful uses.  Only after the transferor's receipt of the approved application form may the firearm transfer be legally made.  A transferee does not and cannot register, though possession of an unregistered firearm is illegal.  No information or evidence furnished under the Act can be used as evidence against a registrant or applicant"in a criminal proceeding with respect to a violation of law occurring prior to or concurrently with the filing of the application or registration, or the compiling of the records containing the information or evidence,"and no information filed is, as a matter of administration, disclosed to other federal, local, or state agencies.  Appellees, who had been indicted under the amended Act for possessing and conspiring to possess unregistered hand grenades, filed motions to dismiss, which the District Court granted on the ground that the amended Act, like its predecessor, compels self-incrimination and that the indictment contravenes due process requirements by failing to allege scienter.  Appellees also contend that the provisions relating to fingerprints and photographs will cause future incrimination.Held:1. The revised statutory scheme of the amended Act, which significantly alters the scheme presented in Haynes, does not involve any violation of the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment.  Pp.  401 U. S. 605-607. Page 401 U. S. 6022. The amended Act fully protects a person against incrimination for past or present violations, and creates no substantial hazards of future incrimination.  P.  401 U. S. 606.3. The amended Act's prohibition against a person's "receiv[ing] or possess[ing] a firearm which is not registered to him," requires no specific intent, and the absence of such a requirement in this essentially regulatory statute in the area of public safety does not violate due process requirements either as respects the substantive count or the conspiracy count.  Pp.  401 U. S. 607-610.Reversed.DOUGLAS J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C.J., and BLACK, HARLAN, BRENNAN (as to Part I), STEWART, WHITE, MARSHALL, and BLACKMUN, JJ., joined.  BRENNAN, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p.  401 U. S. 610.