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524US2

Unit: $U88

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CARON v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

for this caution is borne out by petitioner’s riﬂe attack on
the Miller family, in which petitioner used a gun permitted
by state law. Any other result would reduce federal law to
a sentence enhancement for some state-law violations, a re-
sult inconsistent with the congressional intent we recognized
in Dickerson. Permission to possess one gun cannot mean
permission to possess all.

Congress responded to our ruling in Dickerson by pro-
viding that the law of the State of conviction, not federal law,
determines the restoration of civil rights as a rule. While
state law is the source of law for restorations of other civil
rights, however, it does not follow that state law also controls
the unless clause. Under the Government’s approach, with
which we agree, the federal policy still governs the inter-
pretation of the unless clause. We see nothing contradic-
tory in this analysis. Restoration of the right to vote, the
right to hold ofﬁce, and the right to sit on a jury turns on so
many complexities and nuances that state law is the most
convenient source for deﬁnition. As to the possession of
weapons, however, the Federal Government has an interest
in a single, national, protective policy, broader than required
by state law. Petitioner’s approach would undermine this
protective purpose.

As a ﬁnal matter, petitioner says his reading is required
by the rule of lenity, but his argument is unavailing. The
rule of lenity is not invoked by a grammatical possibility.
It does not apply if the ambiguous reading relied on is an
the congressional purpose. See
implausible reading of
United States v. Shabani, 513 U. S. 10, 17 (1994) (requiring
use of traditional tools of statutory construction to resolve
ambiguities before resorting to the rule of lenity). For the
reasons we have explained, petitioner’s reading is not plau-
sible enough to satisfy this condition.

In sum, Massachusetts treats petitioner as too danger-
ous to trust with handguns, though it accords this right to