Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/13pdf/12-158_6579.pdf
Page Number: 19.0

16 

BOND v. UNITED STATES 

Opinion of the Court 

Haynes’s door knob and mailbox as “combat.”  Nor do the 
other  circumstances  of  Bond’s  offense—an  act  of  revenge
born of romantic jealousy, meant to cause discomfort, that 
produced  nothing  more  than  a  minor  thumb  burn—
suggest  that  a  chemical  weapon  was  deployed  in  Norris-
town, Pennsylvania.  Potassium dichromate and 10-chloro-
10H-phenoxarsine might be chemical weapons if used, say, 
to poison a city’s water supply.  But Bond’s crime is worlds
apart from such hypotheticals, and covering it would give 
the statute a reach exceeding the ordinary meaning of the 
words Congress wrote.

In  settling  on  a  fair  reading  of  a  statute,  it  is  not  un-
usual to consider the ordinary meaning of a defined term, 
particularly  when  there  is  dissonance  between  that  ordi-
nary meaning and the reach of the definition.  In Johnson 
v.  United  States,  559  U. S.  133,  136  (2010),  for  example, 
we considered the statutory term “ ‘violent felony,’ ” which 
the Armed Career Criminal Act defined in relevant part as
an offense that “ ‘has as an element the use . . . of physical 
force  against  the  person  of  another.’ ”    Although  “physical 
force  against  . . .  another”  might  have  meant  any  force, 
however slight, we thought it “clear that in the context of 
a statutory definition of ‘violent felony,’ the phrase ‘physi-
cal  force’  means  violent  force—that  is,  force  capable  of
causing physical pain or injury to another person.”  Id., at 
140.  The ordinary meaning of “chemical weapon” plays a 
similar limiting role here. 

The  Government  would  have  us  brush  aside  the  ordi-
nary  meaning  and  adopt  a  reading  of  section  229  that
would  sweep  in  everything  from  the  detergent  under  the
kitchen  sink  to  the  stain  remover  in  the  laundry  room. 
Yet  no  one  would  ordinarily  describe  those  substances  as
“chemical  weapons.”  The  Government  responds  that
because  Bond  used  “specialized,  highly  toxic”  (though
legal) chemicals, “this case presents no occasion to address
whether Congress intended [section 229] to apply to  com-