Opinion ID: 801219
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Obliterated Serial Number

Text: The sentencing guideline for possession of a firearm provides for a four-level increase in the offense level if the firearm had an altered or obliterated serial number. U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(b)(4). When officers seized Defendant's pistol, they were unable to read the serial number. They sent it to a laboratory, however, where the number was restored through a chemical process. Defendant argues that the serial number was not obliterated because it was eventually recovered. He relies on a dictionary definition of obliterate as eliminate completely so as to leave no trace. Webster's New Riverside University Dictionary 811 (1994). He also contends that this definition is supported by the explanation for the 2006 amendment increasing the § 2K2.1(b)(4) enhancement from two levels to fourto reflect[] both the difficulty in tracing firearms with altered or obliterated serial numbers, and the increased market for these types of weapons, U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual app. C vol. III 177, amend. 691 (2011)which, he says, suggests that an obliterated serial number must be very difficult, if not impossible, to recover. Reviewing de novo the district court's interpretation of the guidelines, see United States v. Mollner, 643 F.3d 713, 714 (10th Cir.2011), we affirm. Defendant's proffered definition is not the only meaning of obliterate. Another is to make undecipherable or imperceptible by obscuring, covering, or wearing or chipping away. Webster's Third New International Dictionary 1557 (2002) (emphasis added). In our view this definition provides the more likely meaning of the guideline. The sentencing guidelines are to govern the practical world, not the world of metaphysical certainty. What matters is what is perceptible, not what can be discerned by sophisticated scientific techniques. Recall that the § 2K2.1(b)(4) enhancement applies not only to a firearm with an obliterated serial number but also to one with an altered number. The word altered does not ordinarily connote a change that destroys all evidence of the original form. We doubt that any court would say that a serial number had not been altered because a laboratory could elicit the original number. Cf. United States v. Carter, 421 F.3d 909, 912-13 (9th Cir.2005) (analyzing meaning of altered in § 2K2.1(b)(4)). Yet it would be nonsensical to say that § 2K2.1(b)(4) applies if the original number can be detected by scientific methods after an alteration but not after an attempted obliteration. Moreover, the purpose of the guideline enhancement is best served by our construction of the word obliterated. The obvious purpose is to discourage the use of untraceable weaponry. Id. at 914 (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted); accord United States v. Perez, 585 F.3d 880, 885 (5th Cir.2009). And if . . . a defendant cannot visually distinguish . . . a would-be untraceable firearm from one that is in fact untraceable, it makes little sense for him to be punished in the latter circumstance but to escape punishment in the former. Carter, 421 F.3d at 915. We therefore conclude that the district court properly applied the enhancement.