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Armed Drug Trafficking
"With my boat, I carry'd away every Thing."
Daniel Defoe
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Muscarello
v.
United States
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Armed Drug Trafficking
Justice Breyer Opinion
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June 8, 1998
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Excerpt:
A provision in the firearms chapter of the federal criminal code
imposes a five-year mandatory prison term upon a person who "uses or
carries a firearm" "during and in relation to" a "drug trafficking
crime." The question before us is whether the
phrase "carries a firearm" is limited to the carrying of firearms on
the person. We hold that it is not so limited. Rather, it also applies
to a person who knowingly possesses and conveys firearms in a vehicle,
including in the locked glove compartment or trunk of a car, which the
person accompanies.
... Robinson Crusoe says, "[w]ith my boat, I carry'd away every Thing." (Daniel Defoe, ROBINSON CRUSOE) And the owners of Queequeg's ship, Melville writes, "had lent him a [wheelbarrow], in which to carry his heavy chest to his boarding-house." (Herman Melville, MOBY DICK) This Court, too, has spoken of the "carrying" of drugs in a car or in its "trunk."
These examples do not speak directly about carrying guns. But there is nothing linguistically special about the fact that weapons, rather than drugs, are being carried. Robinson Crusoe might have carried a gun in his boat; Queequeg might have borrowed a wheelbarrow in which to carry, not a chest, but a harpoon.
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