In a 5-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court today ruled people convicted of crimes overseas can own guns in the United States.

U.S. law bars felons who have been convicted in "any court" from owning guns, but Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing for the majority, reasoned the law should not apply to foreign convictions because courts abroad often have fewer procedural protections for defendants.

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

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."

Breyer argued that Congress can rewrite the law if it intended foreign convictions to apply.

Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, argued in dissent that Congress was literal in its intent that "any" court conviction applied.

"Read naturally, the word 'any' has an expansive meaning, that is, 'one or some indiscriminately of whatever kind,'" Thomas said.

The case was heard in November when Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist was undergoing treatment for thyroid cancer.

The court ruled in favor of Gary Sherwood Small of Pennsylvania, who was indicted in 2000 for lying on a federal form when he bought a handgun. Only days after he was paroled from a Japanese prison for violating weapons laws, he answered "no" to the felony conviction question.

Thomas wrote: "After today's ruling, the only way for Congress to ensure that courts will construe a law to refer to foreign facts or entities is to describe those facts of entities specifically as foreign. If this is not a special burden of specificity, I am not sure what is," Thomas wrote.

The court had been asked by the Bush administration to apply the law to people convicted in foreign countries.