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MUSCARELLO v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

“ships” or “receives”) a ﬁrearm knowing it will be used to
commit any “offense punishable by imprisonment for [more
than] one year,” § 924(b), and it has imposed a 5-year manda-
tory minimum sentence upon one who “carries” a ﬁrearm
“during and in relation to” a “drug trafﬁcking crime,”
§ 924(c). The ﬁrst subsection imposes a less strict sentenc-
ing regime upon one who, say, ships ﬁrearms by mail for
use in a crime elsewhere; the latter subsection imposes a
mandatory sentence upon one who, say, brings a weapon with
him (on his person or in his car) to the site of a drug sale.

Second, petitioners point out that, in Bailey v. United
States, 516 U. S. 137 (1995), we considered the related phrase
“uses . . . a ﬁrearm” found in the same statutory provision
now before us. See 18 U. S. C. § 924(c)(1) (“uses or carries a
ﬁrearm”). We construed the term “use” narrowly, limiting
its application to the “active employment” of a ﬁrearm. Bai-
ley, 516 U. S., at 144. Petitioners argue that it would be
anomalous to construe broadly the word “carries,” its statu-
tory next-door neighbor.

In Bailey, however, we limited “use” of a ﬁrearm to “active
employment” in part because we assumed “that Congress
. . . intended each term to have a particular, nonsuperﬂuous
Id., at 146. A broader interpretation of “use,”
meaning.”
Ibid.
we said, would have swallowed up the term “carry.”
But “carry” as we interpret that word does not swallow up
the term “use.”
“Use” retains the same independent mean-
ing we found for it in Bailey, where we provided examples
Ibid.
involving the displaying or the bartering of a gun.
“Carry” also retains an independent meaning, for, under Bai-
ley, carrying a gun in a car does not necessarily involve the
gun’s “active employment.” More importantly, having con-
strued “use” narrowly in Bailey, we cannot also construe
“carry” narrowly without undercutting the statute’s basic ob-
jective. For the narrow interpretation would remove the
act of carrying a gun in a car entirely from the statute’s