Cite as: 526 U. S. 227 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
passages cited, where those references couched in the singular did not occur in discussions of the issue of offense elements versus sentencing factors that we confront here. So, we think their significance is slight. On the subject of legislative history, we should add that we see nothing favorable to the Government in the fact that the statement in the House Report explaining that the drafters of the carjacking statute drew on the examples of other federal robbery statutes referred to an early version of the carjacking statute when it lacked any reference to the aggravated forms of the offense now defined by subsections (2) and (3). See H. R. Rep. No. 102-851, supra, at 17. As against the suggestion that Congress looked to the earlier robbery statutes only when it settled on the language contained in the carjacking statute's first paragraph, we think it would have been strange for Congress to find guidance in the other robbery statutes at the beginning of the legislative process and then just forget about them. As the Government itself suggests in a somewhat different context, there is no reason to think that Congress "might have abandoned [those] ready federal models" in developing the more fully elaborated version of the statute that it ultimately adopted. Brief for United States 21, n. 8.
III
While we think the fairest reading of § 2119 treats the fact of serious bodily harm as an element, not a mere enhancement, we recognize the possibility of the other view. Any doubt that might be prompted by the arguments for that other reading should, however, be resolved against it under the rule, repeatedly affirmed, that "where a statute is susceptible of two constructions, by one of which grave and doubtful constitutional questions arise and by the other of which such questions are avoided, our duty is to adopt the latter." United States ex rel. Attorney General v. Delaware & Hudson Co., 213 U. S. 366, 408 (1909); see also United States v. Jin Fuey Moy, 241 U. S. 394, 401 (1916). It is "out
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