Court Opinion

ID: 9488289
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:41:21.926849+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:48.605990
License: Public Domain

GINSBURG, Circuit Judge,
with whom STEPHEN F. WILLIAMS, SENTELLE, KAREN LeCRAFT HENDERSON, and ROGERS, Circuit Judges, join, dissenting:
Marcos Anderson managed an extensive drug distribution network that operated in the Washington, D.C. area for several years. He bought drugs from suppliers in several other cities around the country and ran five “distribution centers” in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. For this, Anderson was indicted along with 31 co-conspirators, tried, and convicted of, among other things, conspiring to distribute cocaine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846.
At trial, the Government also proved that Anderson had used at least five firearms on four separate occasions during the course of the conspiracy. In February 1989 Anderson gave two juveniles a .9mm pistol to take to Los Angeles, where Anderson planned to rob a drug supplier. In March of that same year he sent two more guns to Los Angeles with another individual, again in o^der to rob the supplier. When Anderson was arrested in May 1989 at one of his distribution centers, he had a Browning .380 semiautomatic pistol. That same day the police seized another ,9mm semiautomatic pistol at another of Anderson’s distribution centers. For this, Anderson was convicted on four counts of using a firearm during and in relation to the drug-trafficking conspiracy, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1).
Anderson admits for the purpose of this appeal that he used firearms on these four different occasions over the course of the conspiracy. He argues, however, that he can be convicted under § 924(c)(1) for only one of these four uses of a firearm. See generally United States v. Anderson, 39 F.3d 331, 353-57 (D.C.Cir.1994) (panel decision). For the reasons stated below, I would affirm Anderson’s convictions.
I. The Statute
Section 924(c)(1) provides in relevant part that “[w]hoever, during and in relation to any ... drug trafficking crime, ... uses ... a firearm, shall ... be sentenced to imprisonment for five years....”* Anderson contends that he may not be convicted under this statute for more than one use of a firearm in connection with a single drug-trafficking conspiracy, and that the court therefore should vacate three of his convictions in order to avoid violating double jeopardy principles.
Anderson does not dispute that the Congress has the power to punish as a separate *1336offense each use a participant in a drug-trafficking conspiracy makes of a firearm in the course of the conspiracy; for as the Supreme Court explained in Missouri v. Hunter, 459 U.S. 359, 366, 103 S.Ct. 673, 678, 74 L.Ed.2d 535 (1983), “[w]ith respect to cumulative sentences imposed in a single trial, the Double Jeopardy Clause does no more than prevent the sentencing court from prescribing greater punishment than the legislature intended.” Rather, Anderson argues that the Congress did not intend to allow for multiple gun violations in connection with a single drug offense, or in the alternative, that it is at least unclear whether the Congress so intended and that he should receive the benefit of the doubt.
The amicus curiae arguing on Anderson’s behalf (at our request) makes an argument that is logically anterior to any pressed by Anderson. The amicus submits that in § 924(c)(1) the Congress meant only to enhance the punishment applicable to the defendant’s related drug-trafficking crime. Therefore, the argument goes, the statute may be implicated no more than once in connection with a single drug crime.
The argument advanced by the amicus is easily disposed of by reference to the text of § 924(c)(1) and clear Supreme Court precedent. The statute by its terms makes it a crime to use a firearm in connection with illegal drug-trafficking; thus, the Congress did not simply provide an enhanced punishment for a drug offender who uses a gun to commit another crime. Or as the Supreme Court put it, in § 924(c)(1) the Congress “create[d] an offense distinct from the underlying federal felony.” Simpson v. United States, 435 U.S. 6, 10, 98 S.Ct. 909, 912, 55 L.Ed.2d 70 (1978). The commission of a drug-trafficking crime is therefore one element of a § 924(c)(1) violation, Smith v. United States, — U.S. -, 113 S.Ct. 2050, 2053, 124 L.Ed.2d 138 (1993), just as the use of a gun is another. As long as the Government proves both elements (and the requisite intent) beyond a reasonable doubt, the defendant can be convicted under § 924(c)(1), regardless whether he is also convicted of (or for that matter even charged with) the related drug-trafficking crime. See, e.g., United States v. Laing, 889 F.2d 281, 288-89 (D.C.Cir.1989) (holding that in some circumstances a defendant acquitted on the drug-trafficking charge may be punished for violating § 924(c)(1)).
For his part, Anderson submits that the statute “emphasizes the relationship” between the use of a firearm and the connected drug-trafficking crime, thus indicating that the Congress “did not intend a separate violation for each [use of a] firearm.” I agree that the requirement that the firearm have been used in connection with (literally, “during and in relation to”) a drug-trafficking crime limits the application of § 924(c)(1) to certain uses of a firearm — loosely, uses that further the commission of the drug crime— but that limitation does not speak to the question whether there may be more than one use in connection with the same drug offense. It is certainly not a reason to think that a defendant who has committed more than one separate and distinct criminal act, i.e., has more than once used a gun in connection with a single drug-trafficking offense, has violated § 924(c)(1) only once.
There are, of course, statutes that criminalize a course of conduct rather than an individual act; § 924(c)(1) is just not one of them.1 As the Supreme Court stated in Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 302, 52 S.Ct. 180, 181, 76 L.Ed. 306 (1932) (quoting Wharton’s Criminal Law, 11th ed., § 34 n. 3): “The test is whether the individual acts are prohibited, or the course of action which they constitute. If the former, then each act is punishable separately.”
Blockburger itself concerned a statute making it “unlawful for any person to ... sell ... drugs.” Id. at 300 n. 1, 52 S.Ct. at 181 n. 1. The Court reasoned that the statute “does not create the offense of engaging in the business of selling the forbidden drugs, *1337but penalizes any sale made.” Id. at 302, 52 S.Ct. at 181. Thus, one who engages in the business of selling drags violates that statute each time he makes a sale. So too with § 924(e)(1): by its terms the statute prohibits not “engaging in the use” of a firearm in connection with a drag-trafficking crime, but the “use” of a firearm in connection with a drag-trafficking crime. Like the drug dealer in Blockburger who made multiple drag sales, Anderson made use of a firearm four separate and distinct times in the course of a long drag conspiracy, and that makes him liable for four violations of the statute.
This understanding of § 924(c)(1) is confirmed by a long line of decisions, in addition to Blockburger, dealing with the question of precisely what act a particular statute makes criminal. All of these decisions conclude that the particular act referred to in the statute is the determining factor. Whether that act is of a discrete or of a continuing nature is therefore critical. The source of this distinction is a pair of cases decided by the Supreme Court in 1887 and still as instructive as they were then. In re Snow, 120 U.S. 274, 7 S.Ct. 556, 30 L.Ed. 658 (1887), the Court held that a defendant could be convicted only once pursuant to a statute providing that “if any male person ... cohabits with more than one woman, he shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor,” as the offense was “inherentlyf ] a continuous offense ... not an offense consisting of an isolated act.” Id. at 281, 7 S.Ct. at 559. In re Henry, 123 U.S. 372, 8 S.Ct. 142, 31 L.Ed. 174 (1887), however, the Court upheld multiple convictions pursuant to the federal mail fraud statute, Rev.Stat. § 5480, which provided: “If any person ... shall, in and for executing [any] scheme or artifice, ... place any letter or packet in any post-office ... such person ... shall be punished.” See 18 U.S.C. § 1341 (mail fraud, current version); see also 18 U.S.C. § 1343 (wire fraud). There the defendant had mailed multiple letters in furtherance of one such scheme. The Court parsed the statute as follows: “[T]he act forbids ... the putting in the post-office of a letter or packet ... in furtherance of such a scheme. Each letter so ... put in constitutes a separate and distinct violation of the act.” Id. at 374, 8 S.Ct. at 143. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the mail fraud statute — which might as well have said that ‘Whoever, during and in relation to a scheme to defraud, mails a letter” — presents the same interpretive issue that this case raises regarding § 924(c)(1), and that the Supreme Court has already resolved that issue.2
Other decisions in which the Supreme Court distinguishes between statutes that prohibit an individual act and those that prohibit a course of conduct include Ebeling v. Morgan, 237 U.S. 625, 35 S.Ct. 710, 59 L.Ed. 1151 (1915), where the defendant was held to have been properly convicted of six violations of a statute providing that “[wjhoever shall tear, cut, or otherwise injure any mailbag ... shall be fined,” even though he cut the six mailbags during the same criminal episode. The Court reasoned: “Although the transaction of cutting the mail bags was in a sense continuous, the complete statutory offense was committed every time a mail bag was cut in the manner described, with the intent charged.” Id. at 629, 35 S.Ct. at 711. In Bell v. United States, 349 U.S. 81, 75 S.Ct. 620, 99 L.Ed. 905 (1955), the text, “[wjhoever knowingly transports in interstate or foreign commerce ... any woman or girl for ... [an] immoral purpose” was held to support only one conviction for simultaneously transporting two women because “the act of transportation was a single one,” id. at 82, 75 S.Ct. at 621; otherwise the prosecution could “turn[ ] a single transaction into multiple offenses.” Id. at 84, 75 S.Ct. at 622. Similarly, in Ladner v. United States, 358 U.S. 169, 178 n. 6, 79 S.Ct. 209, 214 n. 6, 3 L.Ed.2d 199 (1958), “[wjhoever shall ... assault [a federal officer]” was held to support only one conviction where a single shot wounded two offi*1338cers; the Court noted however, that if two shots had been fired, then two convictions might stand.
As the Government suggests, one way of succinctly stating the rule to be derived from these cases is that the operative verb in the statutory definition of the crime defines the unit of prosecution. Regardless whether this proves always to be true, in this case there is no gainsaying the substantive distinction between § 924(c)(1) as written — “whoever uses a firearm during and in relation to a drug-trafficking crime shall be punished” — and § 924(c)(1) as Anderson and the Court would rewrite it — “whoever commits a drug-trafficking crime with a gun shall be punished.”
The rule that a crime is committed each time a defendant performs the proscribed act is so obvious that courts rarely pause to comment upon it. Consider a variation on § 924(c)(1) simply making the use of a firearm a crime; the proposition that each separate use would be a separate violation of the statute would scarcely warrant any mention. That § 924(c)(1) narrows the prohibited conduct to the use of a firearm in connection with another criminal offense does not alter the appropriate unit of prosecution from “use” of a firearm to the other offense. As noted above, the requirement that the defendant’s use of a firearm take place in connection with a drug-trafficking crime merely reflects the Congress’s intention to single out as federal offenses those uses of a gun that facilitate the commission of such crimes and not others. The resulting doctrinal structure is in all respects like “the classic formulation of the felony-murder doctrine [which] declares that one is guilty of murder if a death results during the commission of any felony,” Model Penal Code § 210.2, comment 6, but not in connection with a misdemeanor. Causing two deaths during a single felony yields two punishments for felony murder, see, e.g., State v. Girdler, 138 Ariz. 482, 675 P.2d 1301, 1307-08 (1983), as should using a gun two times during the course of a single drug-trafficking offense.
Had it so chosen, of course, the Congress could easily have drafted § 924(e)(1) to make it but one crime to use a firearm any number of times in connection with a drug-trafficking offense. Indeed, in fashioning the law of the District of Columbia, it took just that approach to the use of guns in connection with a crime of violence. See D.C.Code § 22-3202 (“Any person who commits a crime of violence, or a dangerous crime in the District of Columbia when armed with or having readily available any pistol or other firearm ... shall ... be imprisoned for ... not less than five years”); Thomas v. United States, 602 A.2d 647, 650 (D.C.App.1992); see also Pub.L. No. 72-275, § 2, 47 Stat. 650 (1932); Pub.L. No. 90-226, Title VI, § 605, 81 Stat. 734, 737 (1967); Pub.L. No. 91-358, Title II, § 205, 84 Stat. 473, 600 (1970) (all enacting this same operative text prior to and contemporaneous with the formulation of § 924(c)(1)). Anderson and the Court read § 924(c)(1) as if it were drafted in the same way.
Our obligation is to read the statute as written, and thus to apply the expressed intent of the Congress. So doing, I think it is clear that an offender violates § 924(c)(1) as he would any other statute, each time he commits the act that it proscribes, i.e., using a firearm in connection with a drug-trafficking crime.
II. Legislative History
Anderson seeks to obscure the clear meaning of § 924(c)(1) with the diversionary claim that there is no indication in the sparse legislative history of the statute that the Congress meant to prohibit each use of a firearm in connection with a drug-trafficking crime. Cf. American Civil Liberties Union v. FCC, 823 F.2d 1554, 1568-69 (D.C.Cir.1987) (legislative histoiy cannot cast doubt upon clear statutory text). For what it is worth, however, the legislative history serves only to confirm our conclusion that Anderson’s four convictions must stand. First, the legislative history clearly supports what the Supreme Court found in Simpson, viz., that the Congress intended separately to punish the use of firearms rather than simply to increase the sentence for the drug-trafficking crime in connection with which the firearms were used.3 “What this amendment *1339does is to make a Federal crime [of] the use or possession of a firearm ... while commit ting these criminal acts____ [W]e now have the opportunity to make the punishment for criminal use and possession of firearms so severe that such crimes will become [rare].” Statement of Rep. Casey, 114 Cong. Rec. 21798 (July 17, 1968) (sponsor of first proposed version of statute). “Any person should understand that if he uses his gun and is caught and convicted, he is going to jail. He should further understand that if he does so a second time, he is going to jail for a longer time.” Statement of Rep. Poff, 114 Cong.Rec. 22231 (July 19, 1968) (sponsor of first enacted version of statute).
Second, there is no indication that the Congress meant to limit its prohibition of the use of a firearm during a drug-trafficking crime to the first such use. Rather, all indications are to the contrary. Consider: “The penalties in this amendment were not addressed to the base felony---- The amendment was addressed to the use of a firearm in the commission of the base felony. It was designed to persuade the man who has decided to set forth on a criminal venture to leave his gun at home.” Statement of Rep. Poff, 114 Cong.Rec. 30583 (Oct. 10, 1968). As explained by Senator Mansfield, the sponsor of an amendment to make it clear that a second violation would result in a mandatory consecutive sentence:
[T]his bill provides for the first time a separate and additional penalty for the mere act of choosing to use or carry a gun in committing a crime under Federal law. If that choice is made more than once, the offender can in no way avoid a prison sentence regardless of the circumstances.
115 Cong.Rec. 34838 (Nov. 19,1969) (emphasis added). Thus, the “act of choosing to use ... a gun” is precisely what the legislators meant to prevent and to punish, and it should be no surprise if the text of the statute accomplishes precisely that result.
Indeed, it borders on the absurd to acknowledge, as Anderson and the Court must do, that the Congress wished to deter and to punish “the act of choosing to use ... a gun” and yet to maintain that it did not wish to punish again the criminal who chooses again to use a gun. Under the Court’s interpretation of § 924(c)(1), however, every use after the first use is a free use. That is, once a drug conspirator has used his gun once in furtherance of the conspiracy, he may as well use, carry, display, brandish, and fire his weapon throughout the conspiracy, for no matter what he does with his firearm, he can be punished under § 924(c)(1) for only one use. He has the same perverse incentive that a thief faced when at common law, see Blackstone, 4 Commentaries *68, virtually all felonies were punishable by death: “As well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.”4
Anderson responds by claiming that the Government can still prosecute a defendant for multiple violations of § 924(c)(1); it has only to prosecute him for multiple drug crimes. His own conduct belies his point, however. Anderson twice sent to Los Angeles guns with which to rob a supplier. Since robbery is not a federal crime (nor, obviously, a drug-trafficking crime) the only reason that he could be charged under § 924(c)(1) at all for those two episodes is that the guns were both tied (via the intended robberies) to his on-going drug-trafficking conspiracy. While the Government may have been able to link one of his other uses of a gun to the Park Towers possession-with-intent-to-distribute count, there is no basis for assuming (as the Court does at 22) that the Government could have linked Anderson’s other two uses to the Travel Act or to some other inchoate crime, much less that there will always be enough qualifying felonies to sup*1340port the defendant’s prosecution for his each separate use of a gun.
The difficulty with the Court’s theory of the case is even more apparent when one considers its effect upon that aspect of the statute that specifies a higher penalty for the use of an especially dangerous weapon, such as a maehinegun. If Anderson could not be punished for a second use of a firearm to rob his L.A. supplier, then he might as well have used a maehinegun. Perhaps he would reply that he could then be prosecuted and sentenced for the use of the maehinegun rather than for the use of the pistol; but that would be to say that his first use of a gun (the pistol) was a crime only until his second use (the maehinegun), whereupon his first use (the pistol) was somehow rendered not a crime. See Ct.Op. at 1326-27. To attribute such uncertainty and illogic to a Congress that intended straightforwardly to outlaw “the act of choosing to use ... a gun” is simply not tenable. I can see nothing in the legislative history of § 924(c)(1) that casts doubt upon the proposition that one violates the statute anew, and can be convicted and sentenced for, each time one uses a firearm in connection with a drug-trafficking crime.
III. The Rule of Lenity
Anderson maintains in the alternative that even if it is possible to construe § 924(c)(1) to allow multiple convictions for multiple uses of a gun in connection with a single drug-trafficking offense, the statute is at least ambiguous and, under the rule of lenity, he should receive the benefit of a more favorable interpretation.5 This argument misconceives the nature of the ambiguity necessary to invoke the rule of lenity, which must be “grievous,” Chapman v. United States, 500 U.S. 453, 463, 111 S.Ct. 1919, 1926, 114 L.Ed.2d 524 (1991), and may not depend upon an “implausible interpretation of a statute.” Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 596, 110 S.Ct. 2143, 2157, 109 L.Ed.2d 607 (1990). As the Supreme Court has said, in construing § 924(e)(1) itself:
The mere possibility of articulating a narrower construction ... does not by itself make the rule of lenity applicable. Instead the venerable rule is reserved for cases where, “after seiz[ing] every thing from which aid can be derived,” the Court is “left with an ambiguous statute.”
Smith, — U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2059 (quoting United States v. Bass, 404 U.S. 336, 347 (1971); United States v. Fisher, 6 U.S. (2 Crunch) 358, 386, 2 L.Ed. 304 (1805)). Nor does the division among jurists interpreting § 924(c)(1) make Anderson’s argument any more persuasive. For while some of us think that the statute is quite clear against Anderson’s position and others do not think it is so clear, our disagreement relative to the rule of lerity is about whether there is any significant ambiguity. To conclude that the debatability of the question whether the statute is ambiguous in itself renders the statute ambiguous is to hand the appellant a victory without requiring him to win any points.
The traditional canons of statutory interpretation are not to be cast aside merely because a criminal defendant can point to the possibility of a different reading, no matter how implausible, and as the above analysis shows, Anderson has done no more than that. It may even be true, as Anderson claims, that § 924(c)(1) “emphasizes the relationship” between the use of a firearm and the commission of a drug-trafficking crime— whatever that implies; the fact remains that we cannot imagine, and he does not suggest, any way in which the limitation of § 924(c)(1) to the use of a firearm in connection with the commission of some other crime could have been expressed in a way that would not give rise to precisely the same arguments that Anderson now makes. In effect, Anderson would say that a statute providing, for example, that “whoever sells drugs shall be punished” is ambiguous on the question whether one who sells drugs twice may be punished twice, and therefore that the Congress, if it would avoid the rule of lenity must provide: “whoever sells drugs shall be punished for each sale.” Indeed, the Court seems (at 1327) to require as much. The rule of lenity *1341is not a trap to be set for the legislature, however; it is rather a preference for the individual over the state when the burden of a “grievous” ambiguity must be allocated to one or the other.
As brought out at great length during the argument of this case, there is indeed an ambiguity lurking in § 924(c)(1), but it is not whether a defendant may be held to have violated the statute more than once in connection with a single drug-trafficking offense. Rather, it concerns the difficulty of saying, in some factual circumstances, whether a defendant has embarked upon a second (or subsequent) use of a firearm. Unfortunately for Anderson, however, this potential ambiguity is in no way implicated in his case. Especially in light of Anderson’s own admission, for the purposes of this appeal, that he used at least four different firearms on four different occasions over the course of the extended drug conspiracy of which he stands convicted, there is simply no room for the argument that any two or more of the four uses constituted but one continuing use.
Nonetheless, much of the argument in this ease — oral, on brief, and in the opinion of the Court — concerns whether upholding Anderson’s convictions would lead to draconian results in other cases yet to come before us. The claim is that, in view of the broad interpretation we gave to the term “use” in United States v. Bailey, 36 F.3d 106, 115 (D.C.Cir.1994) (en banc) (holding that “one uses a gun [for purposes of § 924(e)(1)] whenever one puts or keeps the gun in a particular place from which one ... can gain access to it if and when needed to facilitate a drug crime”), cert. granted, — U.S. -, 115 S.Ct. 1689, 131 L.Ed.2d 554 (1995), a drug dealer who habitually relies upon a gun for security could be charged with having “used a firearm” in connection with each of his many sales, and is therefore exposed to an impossibly long prison sentence.
Two threshold considerations must be kept in mind while addressing this argument. First, it is clear that the Congress is free to provide, and the judiciary therefore constrained to impose, a severe punishment for a crime or series of crimes, limited only by the cruel and unusual punishments clause of the eighth amendment. See, e.g., Deal v. United States, — U.S. -, 113 S.Ct. 1993, 124 L.Ed.2d 44 (1993) (upholding 105-year sentence for six violations of § 924(c)(1)). Second, this court may not decide a case that has yet to come before it, and the question before the court today is only whether a defendant who has admittedly engaged in four separate and distinct uses of a firearm in connection with a single drug-trafficking conspiracy may be convicted of having violated § 924(c)(1) four times.
It is not difficult to posit other cases where it may not be clear whether the defendant has “used” a firearm once, twice, or even twenty times. For example, while it is easy to say that a defendant used a firearm once by deciding not to leave it at home but to take it with him to a drug sale, it is not at all obvious that the same defendant used the firearm again if he then decided to brandish it in order to intimidate his buyer. The matter is still more doubtful if he went on to make a second sale without adverting anew to the gun. In short, while it may be relatively easy to say that a gun-toting defendant has used a firearm at least once and has thus violated § 924(e)(1), it is not necessarily easy to say that the same defendant has used a firearm two or more times so that he might be convicted of multiple violations of the statute. As it happens, however, it is clear in Anderson’s case that he used a firearm at least four times in connection with a single drug-trafficking conspiracy.
The question that Anderson raises and to which the Court lends its ear is not really one about the appropriate unit of prosecution under the statute as written; as explained above, that is each “use.” Rather, the question is that of when, in view of the relatively flexible and “expansive” meaning of the verb “to use,” see Smith, — U.S. at -, 113 S.Ct. at 2058, a defendant may be prosecuted for more than one use under the statute. The rule that Anderson proposes and the Court accepts, which is that there can be no more than one use per drug-trafficking crime, avoids this question only by depriving § 924(c)(1) of its clear content. That option is not lawfully open to us. If there are harder cases than Anderson’s lurking on the *1342horizon, and no doubt there are, then the court’s job is to decide them in a principled fashion as they arrive.
The Supreme Court has made clear, in some of the same cases that help to demonstrate that the use of a firearm is the appropriate unit of prosecution under § 924(c)(1), that where there is doubt concerning the number of separate criminal acts a defendant has engaged in, that doubt should be “resolved against turning a single transaction into multiple offenses.” Bell, 349 U.S. at 84, 75 S.Ct. at 622; see also Ladner, 358 U.S. at 178, 79 S.Ct. at 214. Thus, in both Bell and Ladner the Court rejected the Government’s argument that a single act could amount to two violations of the same statute absent a clear statement by the Congress, but it did not call into question the obvious rule that two separate and distinct acts could amount to two violations. See, e.g., Ladner, 358 U.S. at 178 n. 6, 79 S.Ct. at 214 n. 6 (noting that if it were found that Ladner had fired two shots at the two officers “we cannot say that it is impossible that [he] was properly convicted of more than one offense, even under the principles which govern here”).
Whether an individual act constitutes a separate use is determined under the rule set out in Blockburger, as glossed in Bell: “[W]hen the impulse is single, but one indictment lies, no matter how long the action may continue. If successive impulses are separately given, even though all unite in swelling a common stream of action, separate indictments lie.” Blockburger, 284 U.S. at 302, 52 S.Ct. at 181 (quoting Wharton’s Criminal Law, 11th ed., § 34). Where there is doubt, however, it is to be “resolved against turning a single transaction into multiple offenses.” Bell, 349 U.S. at 84, 75 S.Ct. at 622. Thus, the inquiry is, in the first instance, a factual one: “Whether an aggregate of acts constitutes a single course of conduct and therefore a single offense, or more than one, may not be capable of ascertainment merely from the bare allegations of an information and may have to await the trial based on the facts.” United States v. Universal C.I.T. Credit Corp., 344 U.S. 218, 225, 73 S.Ct. 227, 231, 97 L.Ed. 260 (1952) (rejecting a once-per-week unit of prosecution for criminal violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act absent proof of “wholly distinct managerial decision[s]” to support each violation). Especially where the proscribed act is inherently “continuing” — as is, for example, possession of drugs with intent to distribute, see United States v. Poston, 902 F.2d 90, 94 (D.C.Cir.1990) — a court may be able to hold that upon the particular facts before it there could not be more than one violation of § 924(c)(1). This is not such a case, however; as can be seen from Anderson’s conduct, his uses of the four firearms were separate and distinct, not continuing and arguably singular.
In sum, this is not a case for invoking the rule of lenity. As Judge Leventhal once stated:
Under a general rule of lenity an accused merits the benefit of any reasonable doubt as to legislative intent, but where a man commits a crime with intent, and then expands or modifies his purpose and invades another interest, I see no reasonable basis for inferring a general legislative intent that the change means [no] possibility of a second punishment.
Irby v. United States, 390 F.2d 432, 437-38 (D.C.Cir.1967) (en banc) (concurring opinion). While there will be cases in which it is difficult to say when one impulse ended and another began, that is no justification for concluding that separate and distinct uses, and therefore separate and distinct violations, may not occur over the course of an extended drug-trafficking conspiracy, such as that of which Anderson stands convicted.
IV. Other Court Decisions
Two circuits agree that the Government need not connect each of a defendant’s multiple violations of § 924(c)(1) to a separate drug-trafficking crime. See United States v. Camps, 32 F.3d 102 (4th Cir.1994), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 115 S.Ct. 1118, 130 L.Ed.2d 1082 (1995); United States v. Lucas, 932 F.2d 1210 (8th Cir.1991). (United States v. Freisinger, 937 F.2d 383 (8th Cir.1991), arguably cast some doubt upon Lucas for a time, but Lucas has since been expressly approved in United States v. Edwards, 994 F.2d 417 (8th Cir.1993), and United States v. Mabry, 3 F.3d 244 (8th Cir.1993)).
*1343The highest courts of our two neighboring states have construed statutes similar to § 924(c)(1) as do we to allow multiple firearm convictions in connection with a single related crime. In Monis v. Commonwealth, 228 Va. 206, 321 S.E.2d 633 (1984), the statute read: “It shall be unlawful for any person to use or attempt to use any ... firearm ... while committing or attempting to commit ... [a violent felony].” Va.Code Ann. § 18.2-53.1. The defendant in that case shot and killed two people and was convicted of capital murder under a statute making it a crime to kill “more than one person.” The court rejected the defendant’s argument that he could be convicted of only one firearm violation per connected felony: “The defendant ] ... killed two persons and, since the evidence shows he shot both his victims, ... he committed a corresponding number of distinct firearms offenses in the commission of those killings.” Morris, 321 S.E.2d at 636. In Webb v. State, 311 Md. 610, 536 A.2d 1161 (1988), the court distinguished a statute making in a crime to possess a gun from one prohibiting the “use [of] a handgun ... in the commission of any felony.” Md.Ann.Code art 27, § 36B(d). “The unit of prosecution is the crime of violence [i.e., the use of the gun as opposed to its possession]. This is so because the act prohibited by [the statute] ‘is the use of the handgun....’” Webb, 536 A.2d at 1165. No court in a state making it a separate crime to use a firearm during the commission of another offense has ruled that a defendant may be convicted of only one use per connected crime.
Nonetheless, six federal courts of appeal have spoken approvingly of what some of them denominate the “predicate offense test,” which states that one drug-trafficking crime can serve as the basis for only one violation of § 924(c)(1). See, e.g., United States v. Lindsay, 985 F.2d 666 (2d Cir.1993); United States v. Privette, 947 F.2d 1259 (5th Cir.1991); United States v. Taylor, 13 F.3d 986 (6th Cir.1994); United States v. Cappas, 29 F.3d 1187 (7th Cir.1994); United States v. Smith, 924 F.2d 889 (9th Cir.1991); United States v. Rogers, 921 F.2d 1089 (10th Cir.1990). Some of these decisions rest upon the notion that the “purpose [of the statute] is to target those defendants who chose to involve weapons in an underlying narcotics crime;” and conclude for that reason that the drug crime is the appropriate unit of prosecution. See, e.g., Taylor, 13 F.3d at 993-94. That approach provides no response to the question of what to do with the “defendants who chose to involve” weapons in their drug dealing four times rather than once.
Other decisions, emphasizing the purported ambiguity of the statute, apply the rule of lenity. See, e.g., Lindsay, 985 F.2d at 675-76. While it may well be entirely appropriate to apply the rule of lenity where there is a close question whether a given set of facts reveals one impulse to use a firearm or more, we suggest that those circuits that have relied upon the rule of lenity have stated their holdings overbroadly. Indeed, in most of these cases, there was not more than one separate and distinct use of a firearm in connection with a single drug crime; rather, they generally involved multiple weapons found in a single cache. The courts therefore did not decide whether a defendant could ever be convicted of multiple violations of § 924(e)(1) for multiple but separate uses of a firearm connected to a continuing drug-trafficking offense. See, e.g., Privette, 947 F.2d at 1262 (rejecting number of guns as unit of prosecution); Taylor, 13 F.3d at 993-94 (same); Rogers, 921 F.2d 1089 (same). It remains open to those courts, when confronted squarely with a defendant guilty of multiple separate uses of a gun connected to a single drug (or violent) crime, to reconsider the unit of prosecution under § 924(c)(1). Even in the two cases where there may have been separate and distinct uses of a firearm, as in Anderson’s case, the courts rejected only the proposition that a defendant could be convicted of multiple violations of § 924(c)(1) merely for possessing multiple firearms; they did not focus upon multiple uses of those firearms in connection with an extended drug-trafficking offense. See, e.g., Lindsay, 985 F.2d at 674; Cappas, 29 F.3d at 1190; see also United States v. Bafia, 949 F.2d 1465, 1468-70 (7th Cir.1991) (earlier appeal of defendants in Cappas).
Only one other circuit has expressly acknowledged the precise issue presented today and held that the “predicate” drug of*1344fense is the appropriate unit of prosecution. United States v. Hamilton, 953 F.2d 1344 (11th Cir.1992). What little analysis there seems to be in that decision is rendered all the more suspect because that court apparently misperceived § 924(e)(1) as a sentence-enhancement provision rather than one defining an independent crime, id. at 1346, an error that the Court today stops only slightly short of making. See Ct.Op. at 1325-26.
V. Conclusion
This is a troublesome case for a number of reasons. It is easy to confuse the statute at issue with a similar one that the Congress might well have written instead but did not. Moreover, it is tempting to avoid the possibility of having to decide in future cases whether particular facts constitute separate and distinct uses of a gun. Nevertheless, I agree with the Fourth Circuit that the appellant’s construction of the statute is “unsupported by either text or logic.” Camps, 32 F.3d at 109. By accepting it the Court today substitutes a judicially crafted statute for the one produced by the legislature, and thereby denies the public the sanction they would impose, through their representatives, upon those drug traffickers who would not “leave their guns at home.” I therefore respectfully dissent.

The Ml text of the statute in effect at the time reads:
Whoever, during and in relation to any crime of violence or drug trafficking crime (including a crime of violence or drug trafficking crime which provides for an enhanced punishment if committed by the use of a deadly or dangerous weapon or device) for which he may be prosecuted in a court of the United States, uses or. carries a firearm, shall, in addition to the punishment provided for such crime of violence or drug trafficking crime, be sentenced to imprisonment for five years, and if the firearm is a machinegun, or is equipped with a firearm silencer or firearm muffler, to imprisonment for thirty years. In the case of his second or subsequent conviction under this subsection, such person shall be sentenced to imprisonment for twenty years, and if a the firearm is a machinegun, or is equipped with a firearm silencer or firearm muffler, to life imprisonment without release. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the court shall not place on probation or suspend the sentence of any person convicted of a violation of this subsection, nor shall the term of imprisonment imposed under this subsection run concurrently with any other term of imprisonment including that imposed for the crime of violence or drug trafficking crime in which the firearm was used or carried. No person sentenced under this subsection shall be eligible for parole during the term of imprisonment imposed herein.

. The opinion of the Court (at 7) notwithstanding, there is nothing to the contrary to be found in the statutory prohibition of “carrying” a gun. If anything, it is easier to say that a drug dealer who takes up his gun on two separate occasions in connection with the same drug-trafficking offense has "carried" his firearm more than once than it is to decide whether he has "used” his gun once or twice.

. The Court's attempt (at 19) to distinguish the mail fraud statute upon the ground that it refers to the mailing of "any letter or packet in any post office” is unpersuasive in light of the Supreme Court's focus upon the defendants’ separate acts in Snow and Henry. Even if the Government’s ability to prosecute multiple counts under the mail fraud statute turned solely upon the number of letters sent (rather than upon the number of times the defendant sends one or more letters), the result under § 924(c)(1) would be a "separate guns” test — not the "predicate offense” or "at any time" approach advanced by the Court.

. Contrary to the Court's assertion (at 1327-28), the original version of § 924(c)(1) did in fact *1339make it a crime to use a gun "during the commission of any robbery, assault, murder, rape, burglary, kidnapping or homicide." See 113 Cong.Rec. at 5704 (Mar. 7, 1967); see also Pub.L. No. 90-618 § 102, 82 Stat. 1224 (Oct. 22, 1968) (limiting this proposal to "any felony which may be prosecuted in a court of the United States”).

. It is no answer for the Court to point out (at 1333 n. 9) that even under the Government's theory there comes a point at which an additional “use” of a gun is "free," owing to the fact that an incremental prison term that starts after the defendant's life expectancy is not an effective deterrent; the same may be said of any penalty of imprisonment as applied to a multiple offender.

. This argument is the only one accepted by a majority of the court, notwithstanding dicta in the Court’s opinion that the statute is better read to prohibit the use of a gun "at any time” during the commission of a drug-trafficking crime. See Ct.Op. at 1325-28.