Opinion ID: 2974344
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Possession of a Silencer

Text: Finally, the defendant argues that there was insufficient evidence to convict him on Counts 2 and 3 for possession of an unregistered silencer and possession of a silencer without a serial number, respectively, because there was no evidence that the silencer was operable or could readily be put into operating condition. The defendant points to the government expert’s testimony that he did not know if the brass cylinder recovered by the police worked as a silencer. Finding no controlling decisions from this circuit, he points to an unpublished case from the Fifth Circuit that required the government to prove that the silencers at issue “could readily have been put into operating condition.” United States v. Taylor, No. 03-10167, 2004 WL 1254204, at  (5th Cir. June 9, 2004), vacated, 543 U.S. 1108 (2005), reinstated, 409 F.3d 675 (5th Cir. 2005). In response, the government points to testimony from the expert that the device was designed and intended to be used as a silencer; from the defendant that he was interested in silencers and had researched how they work; from the defendant’s neighbor that the defendant had told him he was trying to make a silencer; and from one of the officers that the defendant had stated that he had fired a blank through the cylinder and it “didn’t work too well.” A silencer is defined by 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(24) as “any device for silencing, muffling, or diminishing the report of a portable firearm, including any combination of parts, designed or redesigned, and intended for use in assembling or fabricating a firearm silencer or firearm muffler, and any part intended only for use in such assembly or fabrication.” The statute does not contain any indication that operability is a necessary component of a silencer. Indeed, the Seventh Circuit has issued two decisions indicating that the government need not prove operability in prosecutions under section 921(a)(24). See United States v. Rogers, 270 F.3d 1076, 1081 (7th Cir. 2001) (jury instruction that conviction depended not on whether screw-on tube actually worked as a silencer but on whether it was intended to work as a silencer “tracks the statutory definition”)(dictum); United States v. Syverson, 90 F.3d 227, 232 (7th Cir. 1996) (rejecting appellants argument that statute only prohibits silencers that work as “contrary to the plain language of the statute . . . [which] defines a silencer as ‘any device for silencing, muffling, or diminishing’ the report of a firearm . . . [and] does not limit the definition of silencer to ‘a device that silences, muffles, or diminishes’” (emphasis in original)). We adopt the analysis of the Seventh Circuit. The language of the statute focuses on the intended application of a silencer, not its actual demonstrated operation. The defendant’s position would be supported by the use of statutory language such as “is capable of silencing” or “that silences.” But Congress did not use such wording. The word choice indicates a concern for the purpose of the mechanism, and the parts thereof, not the function. Given this understanding of the statute’s language, a rational trier of fact could have found beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant possessed such an instrument. Moreover, we reject the defendant’s contention that the trial court erred in refusing to instruct the jury that the government was required to prove the operability of the silencer.