Cite as: 524 U. S. 125 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
reach, leaving a gap in coverage that we do not believe Congress intended.
Third, petitioners say that our reading of the statute would extend its coverage to passengers on buses, trains, or ships, who have placed a firearm, say, in checked luggage. To extend this statute so far, they argue, is unfair, going well beyond what Congress likely would have thought possible. They add that some lower courts, thinking approximately the same, have limited the scope of "carries" to instances where a gun in a car is immediately accessible, thereby most likely excluding from coverage a gun carried in a car's trunk or locked glove compartment. See, e. g., Foster, 133 F. 3d, at 708 (concluding that person "carries" a firearm in a car only if the firearm is immediately accessible); Giraldo, 80 F. 3d, at 676 (same).
In our view, this argument does not take adequate account of other limiting words in the statute—words that make the statute applicable only where a defendant "carries" a gun both "during and in relation to" a drug crime. § 924(c)(1) (emphasis added). Congress added these words in part to prevent prosecution where guns "played" no part in the crime. See S. Rep. No. 98-225, at 314, n. 10; cf. United States v. Stewart, 779 F. 2d 538, 539 (CA9 1985) (Kennedy, J.) (observing that " 'in relation to' " was "added to allay explicitly the concern that a person could be prosecuted . . . for committing an entirely unrelated crime while in possession of a firearm"), overruled in part on other grounds, United States v. Hernandez, 80 F. 3d 1253, 1257 (CA9 1996).
Once one takes account of the words "during" and "in relation to," it no longer seems beyond Congress' likely intent, or otherwise unfair, to interpret the statute as we have done. If one carries a gun in a car "during" and "in relation to" a drug sale, for example, the fact that the gun is carried in the car's trunk or locked glove compartment seems not only logically difficult to distinguish from the immediately accessible gun, but also beside the point.
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