Opinion ID: 6501095
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Enhancement for Large-Capacity Magazines

Text: Faught ends with both procedural and substantive challenges to his 63-month sentence. A defendant who raises a procedural challenge argues that the district court committed some type of process error (for example, by miscalculating the guidelines range) on the way to choosing the ultimate term of imprisonment. United States v. Rayyan, 885 F.3d 436, 440 (6th Cir. 2018). 18 No. 21-6123, United States v. Faught A defendant who raises a substantive challenge, by contrast, attacks the “bottom-line” term of imprisonment as excessive when evaluated against the sentencing factors in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). United States v. Lynde, 926 F.3d 275, 279 (6th Cir. 2019). Faught’s sentencing arguments stem from the guideline for firearm offenses. This guideline increases a defendant’s base offense level if the “offense involved” a “semiautomatic firearm that is capable of accepting a large capacity magazine[.]” U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a)(1), (3), (4). The commentary defines this phrase to include a semiautomatic firearm that, at the time of the offense, “had attached to it a magazine or similar device that could accept more than 15 rounds of ammunition[.]” Id. § 2K2.1 cmt. n.2. Faught did not dispute in the district court that his firearm included this type of magazine or that the enhancement should apply. He instead argued that the court should reject the enhancement because the commentary arbitrarily picked 15 rounds (rather than, say, 14 or 16) as the number that makes a magazine a “large-capacity” magazine. This general contention undergirds both of Faught’s procedural and substantive arguments. Procedurally, Faught says that the district court rejected his claim in a conclusory fashion on the ground that it was bound to follow the large-capacity-magazine enhancement. Faught is correct that the court would have committed a procedural error if it treated the enhancement as mandatory, compare United States v. Pizzino, 419 F. App’x 579, 582–83 (6th Cir. 2011), with United States v. Barnett, 398 F.3d 516, 525 (6th Cir. 2005), or if it failed to adequately explain its rationale for rejecting his argument, compare United States v. Brinda, 851 F. App’x 565, 568–69 (6th Cir. 2021), with United States v. Gapinski, 561 F.3d 467, 474–75 (6th Cir. 2009). But the court did neither. It recognized that it could vary from the guidelines when describing Faught’s reasons why it should do so. Sent. Tr., R.95, PageID 591–92; cf. United States v. Estrada, 313 F. App’x 799, 809–10 (6th Cir. 2008). And it rejected his requested variance not because it 19 No. 21-6123, United States v. Faught felt bound by the guidelines but because the variance “would result in a sentence that’s insufficient under [the] Section 3553(a) factors.” Sent. Tr., R.95, PageID 594. The court likewise gave no hint that it found the large-capacity-magazine enhancement binding. It held only that Faught failed to provide a convincing rationale for it to ignore this enhancement. The court also provided “reasoned” grounds for its decision to follow the enhancement. See United States v. Sabit, 797 F. App’x 218, 222 (6th Cir. 2019) (quoting Rita v. United States, 551 U.S. 338, 356 (2007)). It recognized that the enhancement exists because a person using a large-capacity magazine needs to spend less time reloading and so can inflict greater harm in shorter time. While Faught argued that there was no “empirical evidence” to show that a 15-round magazine was more dangerous than a 14-round magazine, Sent. Tr., R.95, PageID 586, the court pointed out that the record contained no empirical evidence at all on the question, id., PageID 600. It thus reasonably deferred to the Sentencing Commission, which has greater access to the type of national “empirical data” that neither party presented. Kimbrough v. United States, 552 U.S. 85, 109 (2007) (citation omitted). Substantively, Faught argues that the district court gave too much weight to the largecapacity-magazine enhancement when choosing his 63-month sentence. Yet the court’s bottomof-the-guidelines sentence warrants a presumption of reasonableness on appeal, and we may overturn this sentence only if it amounted to an abuse of discretion. See Lynde, 926 F.3d at 279. It does not. When imposing the sentence, the court analyzed all of the applicable sentencing factors. On the one hand, the court highlighted that Faught had been convicted of several firearms offenses in recent years, including one incident in which he had shot into a car with a young child. His criminal history increased the need to deter him and to encourage him to respect the law, making any downward variance improper. 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(1), (2)(A)–(B). On the other hand, 20 No. 21-6123, United States v. Faught the court relied on Faught’s mental-health struggles to choose a sentence at the bottom of the guidelines range. Id. § 3553(a)(1). When balancing the sentencing factors, the court did not even mention Faught’s possession of a large-capacity magazine—let alone overemphasize the fact. We affirm. 21