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Breyer, J., dissenting
in which the relevant language appears is concerned entirely with federal sentencing. Indeed, the word "any" as used earlier in the section unquestionably has the meaning "any federal." 3
Given the Government's recognition of the fact that a completely literal reading of § 924(c)(1) is untenable, and the further fact that the Court offers nothing more than the dictionary definition of the word "any" to support its result, I think the wiser course is to interpret that word in the prohibition against concurrent sentences as having the same meaning as when the same word is first used in the statute.
Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
Justice Breyer, with whom Justice Stevens joins, dissenting.
I believe that Justice Stevens is right. Section 924(c) concerns federal, not state, sentences. Hence Congress intended the words "other term of imprisonment" to refer to other federal, not other state, "terms." With respect to un-discharged state sentences, therefore, 18 U. S. C. § 924(c) is permissive, not mandatory. That is, it permits the federal sentencing judge to make a § 924(c) sentence and an undis-charged state sentence concurrent.
Quite often, it will make little difference that, in this state/ federal circumstance, the consecutive/concurrent decision is permissive, not mandatory. That is because federal sentencing judges, understanding that § 924 requires consecutive sentencing where undischarged federal sentences are at issue, would normally treat undischarged state sentences the same way. They would make the § 924(c) sentence consecu-3 In the first sentence of § 924(c)(1) the word "any" is expressly confined to federal prosecutions. When the word is used a second time to describe "any other provision of law," it is again quite obvious that it embraces only other provisions of federal law even though that limitation is implicit rather than explicit. Nowhere in § 924(c) is there any explicit reference to state law or state sentences.
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