10
Opinion of the Court
hancement under that statute must run consecutively to all other prison terms. Given this clear legislative directive, it is not for the courts to carve out statutory exceptions based on judicial perceptions of good sentencing policy.
Other language in § 924(c) reinforces our conclusion. In 1984, Congress amended § 924(c) so that its sentencing enhancement would apply regardless of whether the underlying felony statute "provides for an enhanced punishment if committed by the use of a deadly or dangerous weapon or device." Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, Pub. L. 98-473, § 1005(a), 98 Stat. 2138-2139. Congress thus repudiated the result we reached in Busic v. United States, 446 U. S. 398 (1980), in which we held that "prosecution and enhanced sentencing under § 924(c) is simply not permissible where the predicate felony statute contains its own enhancement provision," irrespective of whether the Government had actually sought an enhancement under that predicate statute. Id., at 404; see also Simpson v. United States, 435 U. S. 6, 15 (1978) (holding that a federal court may not impose sentences under both § 924(c) and the weapon enhancement under the armed bank robbery statute, 18 U. S. C. § 2113, based on a single criminal transaction). Our holdings in these cases were based on our conclusion that the un-amended text of § 924(c) left us with little "more than a guess" as to how Congress meant to mesh that statute with the sentencing enhancement provisions scattered throughout the federal criminal code. Simpson, supra, at 15; Busic, supra, at 405. The 1984 amendment, however, eliminated these ambiguities. At that point, Congress made clear its desire to run § 924(c) enhancements consecutively to all other prison terms, regardless of whether they were imposed under firearms enhancement statutes similar to § 924(c). We therefore cannot agree with Justice Breyer's contention that our interpretation of § 924(c) distinguishes between "those subject to undischarged state, and those subject to
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