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MUSCARELLO v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

drunken driver who has a “gun in his car.”
Id., at 21792
(Rep. Yates). Others describe the statute as criminalizing
gun “possession”—a term that could stretch beyond both the
“use” of a gun and the carrying of a gun on the person. See
id., at 21793 (Rep. Casey); id., at 22236 (Rep. Meskill); id., at
30584 (Rep. Collier); id., at 30585 (Rep. Skubitz).

C

We are not convinced by petitioners’ remaining arguments
to the contrary. First, they say that our deﬁnition of “carry”
makes it the equivalent of “transport.” Yet, Congress else-
where in related statutes used the word “transport” deliber-
ately to signify a different, and broader, statutory coverage.
The immediately preceding statutory subsection, for ex-
ample, imposes a different set of penalties on one who, with
an intent to commit a crime, “ships, transports, or receives
18 U. S. C. § 924(b).
a ﬁrearm” in interstate commerce.
Moreover, § 926A speciﬁcally “entitle[s]” a person “not other-
wise prohibited . . . from transporting, shipping, or receiving
a ﬁrearm” to “transport a ﬁrearm . . . from any place where
he may lawfully possess and carry” it to “any other place”
where he may do so. Why, petitioners ask, would Congress
have used the word “transport,” or used both “carry” and
“transport” in the same provision, if it had intended to oblit-
erate the distinction between the two?

The short answer is that our deﬁnition does not equate
“carry” and “transport.”
“Carry” implies personal agency
and some degree of possession, whereas “transport” does not
have such a limited connotation and, in addition, implies the
movement of goods in bulk over great distances. See Web-
ster’s Third New International Dictionary, at 343 (noting
that “carry” means “moving to a location some distance away
while supporting or maintaining off the ground” and “is a
natural word to use in ref. to cargoes and loads on trucks,
wagons, planes, ships, or even beasts of burden,” while
“transport refers to carriage in bulk or number over an ap-