Cite as: 508 U. S. 129 (1993)
Stevens, J., dissenting
meaning of the statute could occur only after a conviction for the first offense. See, e. g., United States v. Lindquist, [285 F. 447 (WD Wash. 1921)], and Biddle v. Thiele, [11 F. 2d 235 (CA8 1926)]. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said in Holst v. Owens, [24 F. 2d 100, 101 (1928)]: 'It cannot legally be known that an offense has been committed until there has been a conviction. A second offense, as used in the criminal statutes, is one that has been committed after conviction for a first offense. Likewise, a third or any subsequent offense implies a repetition of crime after each previous conviction.' Similarly, in Smith v. United States, [41 F. 2d 215, 217 (CA9 1930)], the court stated: 'In order that a conviction shall affect the penalty for subsequent offenses, it must be prior to the commission of the offense.' " Ibid.
Congress did not define the term "subsequent conviction" when it enacted § 924(c) in 1968. It is fair to presume, however, that Congress was familiar with the usage uniformly followed in the federal courts. See NLRB v. Amax Coal Co., 453 U. S. 322, 329 (1981); Perrin v. United States, 444 U. S. 37, 42-45 (1979). Indeed, given the settled construction of repeat offender provisions, it is hardly surprising that Congressman Poff, who proposed the floor amendment that became § 924(c), felt it unnecessary to elaborate further. Cf. Morissette v. United States, 342 U. S. 246, 263 (1952) ("[W]here Congress borrows terms of art . . . absence of contrary direction may be taken as satisfaction with widely accepted definitions, not as a departure from them"). It is also unsurprising that there appears to have been no misunderstanding of the term "second or subsequent conviction" for almost 20 years after the enactment of § 924(c).
Section 924(c) was construed by this Court for the first time in Simpson v. United States, 435 U. S. 6 (1978), a case involving sentencing of a defendant who had committed two bank robberies, two months apart. Convicted in two sepa-
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