Cite as: 504 U. S. 505 (1992)
Scalia, J., concurring in judgment
for which an inflexible rule of avoiding redundancy will produce disaster. In any event, the plurality's own interpretation (whereby "manufacturing" a firearm does not require assembling it, and "putting together" is an entirely separate category of "making") renders it not a bit easier to conceive of a nonredundant application for "otherwise producing."
The plurality struggles to explain why its interpretation ("making" does not require assembly of component parts) does not itself render redundant the "combination of parts" language found elsewhere in 26 U. S. C. § 5845, in the definitions of machinegun and destructive device, §§ 5845(b) and (f), and in the incorporated-by-reference definition of silencer, § 5845(a)(7) (referring to 18 U. S. C. § 921). See ante, at 513-516. I do not find its explanations persuasive, particularly that with respect to silencer, which resorts to that last hope of lost interpretive causes, that St. Jude of the hagiology of statutory construction, legislative history. As I have said before, reliance on that source is particularly inappropriate in determining the meaning of a statute with criminal application. United States v. R. L. C., 503 U. S. 291, 307 (1992) (opinion concurring in part and concurring in judgment).
There is another reason why the plurality's interpretation is incorrect: It determines what constitutes a regulated "firearm" via an operative provision of the NFA (here § 5821, the making tax) rather than by way of § 5845, which defines firearms covered by the chapter. With respect to the definitions of machineguns, destructive devices, and silencers, for instance, the reference to "combination of parts" causes parts aggregations to be firearms whenever those nouns are used, and not just when they are used in conjunction with the verb "make" and its derivatives. Thus, the restrictions of § 5844, which regulate the importation of "firearm[s]" (a term defined to include "machinegun[s]," see § 5845(a)(6)), apply to a "combination of parts from which a machinegun can be assembled" (because that is part of the definition of
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