Cite as: 520 U. S. 1 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
provides that a sentence imposed under that statute "shall [not] . . . run concurrently with any other term of imprisonment." We hold that it may not.
I
Respondents were arrested in a drug sting operation during which two of them pulled guns on undercover police officers. All three were convicted in New Mexico courts on charges arising from the holdup. The state courts sentenced them to prison terms ranging from 13 to 17 years. After they began to serve their state sentences, respondents were convicted in federal court of committing various drug offenses connected to the sting operation, and conspiring to do so, in violation of 21 U. S. C. §§ 841 and 846. They were also convicted of using firearms during and in relation to those drug trafficking crimes, in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 924(c). Respondents received sentences ranging from 120 to 147 months in prison, of which 60 months reflected the mandatory sentence required for their firearms convictions. Pursuant to § 924(c), the District Court ordered that the portion of respondents' federal sentences attributable to the drug convictions run concurrently with their state sentences, with the remaining 60 months due to the firearms offenses to run consecutively to both.
The Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit vacated respondents' sentences for the firearms violations, on the ground that the § 924(c) sentences should have run concurrently with the state prison terms. 65 F. 3d 814 (1995). (The court also vacated respondents' substantive drug convictions and dealt with various other sentencing issues not before us.) Although the Court of Appeals recognized that other Circuits had uniformly "held that § 924(c)'s plain language prohibits sentences imposed under that statute from running concurrently with state sentences," it nevertheless thought that "a literal reading of the statutory language would produce an absurd result." Id., at 819. Feeling
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