Cite as: 529 U. S. 848 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
Were we to adopt the Government's expansive interpretation of § 844(i), hardly a building in the land would fall outside the federal statute's domain. Practically every building in our cities, towns, and rural areas is constructed with supplies that have moved in interstate commerce, served by utilities that have an interstate connection, financed or insured by enterprises that do business across state lines, or bears some other trace of interstate commerce. See, e. g., FERC v. Mississippi, 456 U. S. 742, 757 (1982) (observing that electric energy is consumed "in virtually every home" and that "[n]o State relies solely on its own resources" to meet its inhabitants' demand for the product). If such connections sufficed to trigger § 844(i), the statute's limiting language, "used in" any commerce-affecting activity, would have no office. See United States v. Monholland, 607 F. 2d 1311, 1316 (CA10 1979) (finding in § 844(i) no indication that Congress intended to include "everybody and everything"). "Judges should hesitate . . . to treat statutory terms in any setting [as surplusage], and resistance should be heightened when the words describe an element of a criminal offense." Ratzlaf v. United States, 510 U. S. 135, 140-141 (1994); accord, Bailey, 516 U. S., at 145.
III
Our reading of § 844(i) is in harmony with the guiding principle 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), quoted in Jones v. United States, 526 U. S. 227, 239 (1999); see also DeBartolo, 485 U. S., at 575; Ash-wander v. TVA, 297 U. S. 288, 348 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring). In Lopez, this Court invalidated the Gun-Free School Zones Act, former 18 U. S. C. § 922(q) (1988 ed., Supp. V), which made it a federal crime to possess a firearm within
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