(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2007 1 

Syllabus 

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is

being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.

The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been

prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. 

See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337. 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Syllabus 

WATSON v. UNITED STATES 

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR 

THE FIFTH CIRCUIT 

No. 06–571. Argued October 9, 2007—Decided December 10, 2007 

After trading a controlled substance for a pistol, petitioner Watson was

indicted for, inter alia, violating 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(1)(A), which sets

a mandatory minimum sentence, depending on the facts, for a defendant who, “during and in relation to any . . . drug trafficking crime[,] 

. . . uses . . . a firearm.” The statute does not define “uses,” but this 

Court has spoken to it twice. In holding that “a criminal who trades

his firearm for drugs ‘uses’ it . . . within the meaning of §924(c)(1),” 

Smith v. United States, 508 U. S. 223, 241, the Court rested primarily

on the “ordinary or natural meaning” of the verb in context, id., at 

228, understanding its common range as going beyond employment

as a weapon to trading a weapon for drugs, id., at 230. Later, in 

holding that merely possessing a firearm kept near the scene of drug 

trafficking is not “use” under §924(c)(1), the Court, in Bailey v. 

United States, 516 U. S. 137, again looked to “ordinary or natural” 

meaning, id., at 145, deciding that “§924(c)(1) requires evidence sufficient to show an active employment of the firearm by the defendant, a

use that makes the firearm an operative factor in relation to the

predicate offense,” id., at 143. Watson pleaded guilty but reserved 

the right to challenge the factual basis for a §924(c)(1)(A) conviction

and sentence. The Fifth Circuit affirmed on its precedent foreclosing 

any argument that Watson had not “used” a firearm. 

Held: A person does not “use” a firearm under 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(1)(A)

when he receives it in trade for drugs. Pp. 4–9. 

(a) The Government’s position lacks authority in either precedent 

or regular English. Neither Smith, which addressed only the trader 

who swaps his gun for drugs, not the trading partner who ends up 

with the gun, nor Bailey, which ruled that a gun must be made use of 

actively to satisfy §924(c)(1)(A), decides this case. With no statutory 
2 WATSON v. UNITED STATES 

Syllabus 

definition, the meaning of “uses” has to turn on “everyday meaning”

revealed in phraseology that strikes the ear as “both reasonable and

normal.” Smith, supra, 228, 230. When Watson handed over the 

drugs for the pistol, the officer “used” the pistol to get the drugs, but 

regular speech would not say that Watson himself used the pistol in

the trade. Pp. 4–5.

(b) The Government’s first effort to trump ordinary English is rejected. Noting that §924(d)(1) authorizes seizure and forfeiture of 

firearms “intended to be used in” certain crimes, the Government infers that since some of those offenses involve receipt of a firearm, 

“use” necessarily includes receipt of a gun even in a barter transaction. The Government’s reliance on Smith for the proposition that 

the term must be given the same meaning in both subsections overreads Smith. The common verb “use” is not at odds in the two subsections but speaks to different issues in different voices and at different levels of specificity. Section 924(d)(1) indicates that a gun can

be “used” in a receipt crime, but does not say whether both parties to

a transfer use the gun, or only one, or which one; however, 

§924(c)(1)(A) requires just such a specific identification. Pp. 5–7.

(c) Nor is the Government’s second effort to trump ordinary English persuasive. It claims that failing to treat receipt in trade as

“use” would create unacceptable asymmetry with Smith; i.e., it would 

be strange to penalize one side of a gun-for-drugs exchange but not 

the other. The problem is not with Smith, however, but with the limited malleability of the language it construed, and policy-driven 

symmetry cannot turn “receipt-in-trade” into “use.” Whatever the 

tension between the prior result and the outcome here, law depends 

on respect for language and would be served better by statutory

amendment than by racking statutory language to cover a policy it

fails to reach. Pp. 8–9. 

191 Fed. Appx. 326, reversed and remanded. 

SOUTER, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, 

C. J., and STEVENS, SCALIA, KENNEDY, THOMAS, BREYER, and ALITO, JJ., 

joined. GINSBURG, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. 
_________________ 

_________________ 

Cite as: 552 U. S. ____ (2007) 1 

Opinion of the Court 

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the

preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to

notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order

that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press. 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

No. 06–571 

MICHAEL A. WATSON, PETITIONER v.

UNITED STATES

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF 

APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

[December 10, 2007] 

JUSTICE SOUTER delivered the opinion of the Court. 

The question is whether a person who trades his drugs 

for a gun “uses” a firearm “during and in relation to . . . [a] 

drug trafficking crime” within the meaning of 18 U. S. C. 

§924(c)(1)(A).1 We hold that he does not. 

I 

A 

Section 924(c)(1)(A) sets a mandatory minimum sentence, depending on the facts, for a defendant who, “during 

and in relation to any crime of violence or drug trafficking 

crime[,] . . . uses or carries a firearm.”2 The statute leaves 

the term “uses” undefined, though we have spoken to it

twice before. 

Smith v. United States, 508 U. S. 223 (1993) raised the

converse of today’s question, and held that “a criminal who 

—————— 

1Formerly 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(1) (1994 ed.). 2Any violation of §924(c)(1)(A), for example, demands a mandatory 

minimum sentence of 5 years. See 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(1)(A)(i). If the 

firearm is brandished, the minimum goes up to 7 years, see 

§924(c)(1)(A)(ii); if the firearm is discharged, the minimum jumps to 10

years, see §924(c)(1)(A)(iii). 
2 WATSON v. UNITED STATES 

Opinion of the Court 

trades his firearm for drugs ‘uses’ it during and in relation 

to a drug trafficking offense within the meaning of 

§924(c)(1).” Id., at 241. We rested primarily on the “ordinary or natural meaning” of the verb in context, id., at 

228, and understood its common range as going beyond

employment as a weapon: “it is both reasonable and normal to say that petitioner ‘used’ his MAC–10 in his drug

trafficking offense by trading it for cocaine,” id., at 230. 

Two years later, the issue in Bailey v. United States, 516 

U. S. 137 (1995) was whether possessing a firearm kept 

near the scene of drug trafficking is “use” under §924(c)(1).

We looked again to “ordinary or natural” meaning, id., at 

145, and decided that mere possession does not amount to 

“use”: “§924(c)(1) requires evidence sufficient to show an 

active employment of the firearm by the defendant, a use

that makes the firearm an operative factor in relation to 

the predicate offense,” id., at 143.3 

B 

This third case on the reach of §924(c)(1)(A) began to

take shape when petitioner, Michael A. Watson, told a 

Government informant that he wanted to acquire a gun.

On the matter of price, the informant quoted no dollar

figure but suggested that Watson could pay in narcotics. 

Next, Watson met with the informant and an undercover 

law enforcement agent posing as a firearms dealer, to 

whom he gave 24 doses of oxycodone hydrocholoride 

(commonly, OxyContin) for a .50 caliber semiautomatic 

pistol. When law enforcement officers arrested Watson, 

they found the pistol in his car, and a later search of his 

house turned up a cache of prescription medicines, guns, 

—————— 

3 In 1998, Congress responded to Bailey by amending §924(c)(1). The 

amendment broadened the provision to cover a defendant who “in 

furtherance of any [crime of violence or drug trafficking] crime, possesses a firearm.” 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(1)(A). The amendment did not 

touch the “use” prong of §924(c)(1). 
Cite as: 552 U. S. ____ (2007) 3 

Opinion of the Court 

and ammunition. Watson said he got the pistol “to protect 

his other firearms and drugs.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 11a.

A federal grand jury indicted him for distributing a

Schedule II controlled substance and for “using” the pistol

during and in relation to that crime, in violation of 

§924(c)(1)(A).4 Watson pleaded guilty across the board,

reserving the right to challenge the factual basis for a 

§924(c)(1)(A) conviction and the added consecutive sentence of 60 months for using the gun. The Court of Appeals affirmed, 191 Fed. Appx. 326 (CA5 2006) (per curiam), on Circuit precedent foreclosing any argument that

Watson had not “used” a firearm, see id., at 327 (citing 

United States v. Ulloa, 94 F. 3d 949 (CA5 1996) and 

United States v. Zuniga, 18 F. 3d 1254 (CA5 1994)).

We granted certiorari to resolve a conflict among the 

Circuits on whether a person “uses” a firearm within the

meaning of 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(1)(A) when he trades narcotics to obtain a gun.5 549 U. S. ___ (2007). We now 

—————— 

4The grand jury also indicted Watson as a felon in possession of a

firearm, in violation of §922(g)(1). This count referred to the five 

firearms found in Watson’s house, but not the pistol he got for the 

narcotics. 5Compare United States v. Cotto, 456 F. 3d 25 (CA1 2006) (trading

drugs for a firearm constitutes “use” of the firearm under §924(c)(1)(A)); 

United States v. Sumler, 294 F. 3d 579 (CA3 2002) (same); United 

States v. Ramirez-Rangel, 103 F. 3d 1501 (CA9 1997) (same); United 

States v. Ulloa, 94 F. 3d 949 (CA5 1996) (same); United States v. 

Cannon, 88 F. 3d 1495 (CA8 1996) (same), with United States v. 

Montano, 398 F. 3d 1276 (CA11 2005) (per curiam) (defendant did not

“use” a firearm within the meaning of §924(c)(1)(A) when he traded

drugs for a firearm); United States v. Stewart, 246 F. 3d 728 (CADC 

2001) (same); United States v. Warwick, 167 F. 3d 965 (CA6 1999) 

(same); United States v. Westmoreland, 122 F. 3d 431 (CA7 1997) 

(same). The Fourth Circuit has held that a defendant “used” a firearm 

where he gave cocaine base to a compatriot in exchange for assistance 

in obtaining a gun. See United States v. Harris, 39 F. 3d 1262 (1994).

Subsequent unpublished opinions in that Circuit have relied on Harris 

for the proposition that the receipt of a firearm in exchange for drugs

constitutes use of the firearm. See, e.g., United States v. Belcher, No. 
4 WATSON v. UNITED STATES 

Opinion of the Court 

reverse. 

II 

A 

The Government’s position that Watson “used” the

pistol under §924(c)(1)(A) by receiving it for narcotics lacks 

authority in either precedent or regular English. To begin 

with, neither Smith nor Bailey implicitly decides this case. 

While Smith held that firearms may be “used” in a barter

transaction, even with no violent employment, see 508

U. S., at 241, the case addressed only the trader who

swaps his gun for drugs, not the trading partner who ends 

up with the gun. Bailey, too, is unhelpful, with its rule 

that a gun must be made use of actively to satisfy 

§924(c)(1)(A), as “an operative factor in relation to the

predicate offense.” 516 U. S., at 143. The question here is

whether it makes sense to say that Watson employed the

gun at all; Bailey does not answer it. 

With no statutory definition or definitive clue, the 

meaning of the verb “uses” has to turn on the language as

we normally speak it, see, e.g., Lopez v. Gonzales, 549 

U. S. ___, ___ (2006) (slip op., at 5); Asgrow Seed Co. v. 

Winterboer, 513 U. S. 179, 187 (1995); FDIC v. Meyer, 510 

U. S. 471, 476 (1994); there is no other source of a reasonable inference about what Congress understood when 

writing or what its words will bring to the mind of a careful reader. So, in Smith we looked for “everyday meaning,” 508 U. S., at 228, revealed in phraseology that 

strikes the ear as “both reasonable and normal,” id., at 

230. See also Bailey, supra, at 145. This appeal to the

ordinary leaves the Government without much of a case.

The Government may say that a person “uses” a firearm

simply by receiving it in a barter transaction, but no one 

else would. A boy who trades an apple to get a granola bar 

—————— 

98–4845, 1999 WL 1080103 (CA4, Nov. 29, 1999) (per curiam). 
Cite as: 552 U. S. ____ (2007) 5 

Opinion of the Court 

is sensibly said to use the apple, but one would never 

guess which way this commerce actually flowed from 

hearing that the boy used the granola. Cf. United States 

v. Stewart, 246 F. 3d 728, 731 (CADC 2001) (“[W]hen a

person pays a cashier a dollar for a cup of coffee in the 

courthouse cafeteria, the customer has not used the coffee. 

He has only used the dollar bill”). So, when Watson 

handed over the drugs for the pistol, the informant or the 

agent6 “used” the pistol to get the drugs, just as Smith 

held, but regular speech would not say that Watson himself used the pistol in the trade. “A seller does not ‘use’ a 

buyer’s consideration,” United States v. Westmoreland, 122 

F. 3d 431, 436 (CA7 1997), and the Government’s contrary 

position recalls another case; Lopez, supra, at ___ (slip op.,

at 7), rejected the Government’s interpretation of 18 

U. S. C. §924(c)(2) because “we do not normally speak or 

write the Government’s way.”7 

B 

The Government would trump ordinary English with 

two arguments. First, it relies on Smith for the pertinence

of a neighboring provision, 18 U. S. C. §924(d)(1), which 

authorizes seizure and forfeiture of firearms “intended to 

be used in” certain criminal offenses listed in §924(d)(3).

Some of those offenses involve receipt of a firearm,8 from 

—————— 

6The record does not say which. 7Dictionaries confirm the conclusion. “Use” is concededly “elastic,” 

Smith v. United States, 508 U. S. 223, 241 (1993) (SCALIA, J., dissenting), but none of its standard definitions stretch far enough to reach 

Watson’s conduct, see, e.g., Webster’s New International Dictionary of

the English Language 2806 (2d ed. 1939) (“to employ”); The Random

House Dictionary of the English Language 2097 (2d ed. 1987) (to “apply

to one’s own purposes”; “put into service; make use of”); Black’s Law 

Dictionary 1541 (6th ed. 1990) (“[t]o avail oneself of; . . . to utilize”); see

also Smith, supra, at 228–229 (listing various dictionary definitions). 8See, e.g., 18 U. S. C. §922(j) (prohibiting, inter alia, the receipt of a

stolen firearm in interstate commerce); §924(b) (prohibiting, inter alia, 
6 WATSON v. UNITED STATES 

Opinion of the Court 

which the Government infers that “use” under §924(d) 

necessarily includes receipt of a gun even in a barter 

transaction. Smith is cited for the proposition that the

term must be given the same meaning in both subsections,

and the Government urges us to import “use” as “receipt

in barter” into §924(c)(1)(A).

We agree with the Government that §924(d) calls for 

attention; the reference to intended use in a receipt crime 

carries some suggestion that receipt can be “use” (more of 

a hint, say, than speaking of intended “use” in a crime

defined as exchange). But the suggestion is a tepid one

and falls short of supporting what is really an attempt to

draw a conclusion too specific from a premise too general.

The Smith majority rested principally on ordinary

speech in reasoning that §924(c)(1) extends beyond use as

a weapon and includes use as an item of barter, see 508 

U. S., at 228–230, and the Smith opinion looks to §924(d) 

only for its light on that conclusion. It notes that the 

“intended to be used” clause of §924(d)(1) refers to offenses 

where “the firearm is not used as a weapon but instead as

an item of barter or commerce,” id., at 234, with the implication that Congress intended “use” to reach commercial 

transactions, not just gun violence, in §924(d) generally, 

see id., at 234–235. It was this breadth of treatment that 

led the Smith majority to say that, “[u]nless we are to hold 

that using a firearm has a different meaning in §924(c)(1) 

than it does in §924(d)—and clearly we should not—we 

must reject petitioner’s narrow interpretation.” Id., at 235 

(citation omitted); see also Bailey, supra, at 146 (“[U]sing a

firearm should not have a different meaning in §924(c)(1) 

than it does in §924(d)” (internal quotation marks omitted)).

The Government overreads Smith. While the neighbor-

—————— 

the receipt of a firearm in interstate commerce with the intent to

commit a felony). 
Cite as: 552 U. S. ____ (2007) 7 

Opinion of the Court 

ing provision indicates that a firearm is “used” nonoffensively, and supports the conclusion that a gun can be 

“used” in barter, beyond that point its illumination fails. 

This is so because the utility of §924(d)(1) is limited by its 

generality and its passive voice; it tells us a gun can be 

“used” in a receipt crime, but not whether both parties to a 

transfer use the gun, or only one, or which one. The 

nearby subsection (c)(1)(A), however, requires just such a

specific identification. It provides that a person who uses

a gun in the circumstances described commits a crime,

whose perpetrator must be clearly identifiable in advance. 

The agnosticism on the part of §924(d)(1) about who

does the using is entirely consistent with common speech’s 

understanding that the first possessor is the one who 

“uses” the gun in the trade, and there is thus no cause to 

admonish us to adhere to the paradigm of a statute “as a

symmetrical and coherent regulatory scheme, . . . in which

the operative words have a consistent meaning throughout,” Gustafson v. Alloyd Co., 513 U. S. 561, 569 (1995), or 

to invoke the “standard principle of statutory construction

. . . that identical words and phrases within the same

statute should normally be given the same meaning,” 

Powerex Corp. v. Reliant Energy Services, Inc., 551 U. S. 

___, ___ (2007) (slip op., at 7). Subsections (d)(1) and

(c)(1)(A) as we read them are not at odds over the verb

“use”; the point is merely that in the two subsections the

common verb speaks to different issues in different voices 

and at different levels of specificity. The provisions do 

distinct jobs, but we do not make them guilty of employing 

the common verb inconsistently.9 

—————— 

9For that matter, the Government’s argument that “use” must always have an identical meaning in §§924(c)(1)(A) and 924(d)(1) would 

upend Bailey v. United States, 516 U. S. 137 (1995). One of the relevant predicate offenses referred to by §924(d)(1) is possession of “any 

stolen firearm . . . [in] interstate or foreign commerce.” 18 U. S. C. 

§922(j). If we were to hold that all criminal conduct covered by the 
8 WATSON v. UNITED STATES 

Opinion of the Court 

C 

The second effort to trump regular English is the claim 

that failing to treat receipt in trade as “use” would create 

unacceptable asymmetry with Smith. At bottom, this 

atextual policy critique says it would be strange to penalize one side of a gun-for-drugs exchange but not the other:

“[t]he danger to society is created not only by the person

who brings the firearm to the drug transaction, but also by 

the drug dealer who takes the weapon in exchange for his 

drugs during the transaction,” Brief for United States 23.

The position assumes that Smith must be respected, and

we join the Government at least on this starting point. A 

difference of opinion within the Court (as in Smith) does

not keep the door open for another try at statutory construction, where stare decisis has “special force [since] the 

legislative power is implicated, and Congress remains free 

to alter what we have done.” Patterson v. McLean Credit 

Union, 491 U. S. 164, 172–173 (1989). What is more, in 14 

years Congress has taken no step to modify Smith’s holding, and this long congressional acquiescence “has enhanced even the usual precedential force” we accord to our 

interpretations of statutes, Shepard v. United States, 544 

U. S. 13, 23 (2005).

The problem, then, is not with the sturdiness of Smith 

but with the limited malleability of the language Smith 

construed, and policy-driven symmetry cannot turn “receipt-in-trade” into “use.” Whatever the tension between 

the prior result and the outcome here, law depends on

respect for language and would be served better by statutory amendment (if Congress sees asymmetry) than by 

—————— 

“intended to be used” clause in §924(d)(1) is “use” for purposes of 

§924(c)(1)(A), it would follow that mere possession is use. But that 

would squarely conflict with our considered and unanimous decision in 

Bailey that “ ‘use’ must connote more than mere possession of a firearm.” 516 U. S., at 143. 
Cite as: 552 U. S. ____ (2007) 9 

Opinion of the Court 

racking statutory language to cover a policy it fails to 

reach. 

The argument is a peculiar one, in fact, given the Government’s take on the current state of §924(c)(1)(A). It 

was amended after Bailey and now prohibits not only

using a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking 

crime, but also possessing one “in furtherance of” such a

crime. 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(1)(A); see n. 3, supra. The 

Government is confident that “a drug dealer who takes a

firearm in exchange for his drugs generally will be subject 

to prosecution” under this new possession prong. Brief for 

United States 27; see Tr. of Oral Arg. 41 (Watson’s case

“could have been charged as possession”); cf. United States 

v. Cox, 324 F. 3d 77, 83, n. 2 (CA2 2003) (“For defendants

charged under §924(c) after [the post-Bailey] amendment, 

trading drugs for a gun will probably result in . . . possession [in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime]”). This 

view may or may not prevail, and we do not speak to it 

today, but it does leave the appeal to symmetry underwhelming in a contest with the English language, on the 

Government’s very terms. 

* * * 

Given ordinary meaning and the conventions of English,

we hold that a person does not “use” a firearm under 

§924(c)(1)(A) when he receives it in trade for drugs. The 

judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case

is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this

opinion. 

It is so ordered. 
_________________ 

_________________ 

Cite as: 552 U. S. ____ (2007) 1 

GINSBURG, J., concurring in judgment 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

No. 06–571 

MICHAEL A. WATSON, PETITIONER v.

UNITED STATES

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF 

APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

[December 10, 2007] 

JUSTICE GINSBURG, concurring in the judgment. 

It is better to receive than to give, the Court holds today,

at least when the subject is guns. Distinguishing, as the

Court does, between trading a gun for drugs and trading

drugs for a gun, for purposes of the 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(1) 

enhancement, makes scant sense to me. I join the Court’s

judgment, however, because I am persuaded that the 

Court took a wrong turn in Smith v. United States, 508 

U. S. 223 (1993), when it held that trading a gun for drugs 

fits within §924(c)(1)’s compass as “us[e]” of a firearm

“during and in relation to any . . . drug trafficking crime.” 

For reasons well stated by JUSTICE SCALIA in his dissenting opinion in Smith, 508 U. S., at 241, I would read the 

word “use” in §924(c)(1) to mean use as a weapon, not use 

in a bartering transaction. Accordingly, I would overrule 

Smith, and thereby render our precedent both coherent

and consistent with normal usage. Cf. Henslee v. Union 

Planters Nat. Bank & Trust Co., 335 U. S. 595, 600 (1949) 

(Frankfurter, J., dissenting) (“Wisdom too often never 

comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it

comes late.”).