Split en banc Fifth Circuit limits reach of Johnson vagueness ruling while debating what makes for a "constitutional sockdolager"

Especially while traveling and being engaged with lots of other projects, I have not been able to keep up fully this summer with many lower federal court cases exploring the application of the Supreme Court's Johnson ACCA vagueness ruling to other comparable provisions of other federal sentencing statutes and guidelines.  Helpfully, though, an en banc ruling by the Fifth Circuit late last week in US v. Gonzalez-Longoria, No. 15-40041 (5th Cir. Aug. 5, 2016) (available here), provides something of a primer on developments in one notable context. Here is how the en banc majority opinion (per Judge Higginson) gets started and a key part of its analysis:

This case presents the question whether the “crime of violence” definition provided by 18 U.S.C. § 16(b), when incorporated by reference into United States Sentencing Guidelines § 2L1.2(b)(1)(C), is unconstitutionally vague on its face in light of Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015), in which the Court struck as unconstitutionally vague the residual clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii). We hold that 18 U.S.C. § 16(b) is not unconstitutionally vague....

The [textual] distinctions [in how “crime of violence” is defined in § 16(b)] mean that the concerns raised by the Court in Johnson with respect to Armed Career Criminal Act’s residual clause do not cause the same problems in the context of 18 U.S.C. § 16(b). While there might be specific situations in which 18 U.S.C. § 16(b) would be vague — although Gonzalez-Longoria does not suggest any in particular — it is certainly not a statute that “simply has no core.”

And here is how the dissenting opinion (per Judge Jolly) gets started and key parts of its analysis (with emphasis from the original):

I am in agreement with the majority’s framework for deciding this case. Specifically, I agree that Johnson “highlighted two features of the [Armed Career Criminal] Act’s residual clause that together make the clause unconstitutionally vague [and that] 18 U.S.C. § 16(b) shares these two features.” I also agree that “neither feature causes the same level of indeterminacy in the context of 18 U.S.C. § 16(b).”  The majority, however, drifts from reason — and into the miasma of the minutiae — when it determines that these vagaries suffice to distinguish § 16(b) from the residual clause.  Accordingly, I respectfully dissent....

I can agree that [a textual distinction] provides a shadow of difference, but hardly a constitutional sockdolager. This difference between the two statutes is particularly slight because, through judicial interpretation, § 16(b) not only contains an example, it contains the very example that most troubled the Johnson Court....

These statutes read extremely similarly. The majority of circuits to have considered the question have held that these two similar texts must suffer the same constitutional fate. The majority, engrossed by thinly sliced and meaningless distinctions, adopts the minority view and errs by losing track of the entirety: these statutes, in constitutional essence, say the same thing.