122
Opinion of the Court
I
Petitioners are members of the Branch-Davidian religious sect and are among those who were involved in a violent confrontation with federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms near Waco, Texas, in 1993. The case before us arises out of an indictment alleging that, among other things, petitioners conspired to murder federal officers. At the time of petitioners' trial, the criminal statute at issue (reprinted in its entirety in the Appendix, infra) read in relevant part:
"(c)(1) Whoever, during and in relation to any crime of violence . . . , uses or carries a firearm, shall, in addition to the punishment provided for such crime of violence . . . , be sentenced to imprisonment for five years, and if the firearm is a short-barreled rifle [or a] short-barreled shotgun to imprisonment for ten years, and if the firearm is a machinegun, or a destructive device, or is equipped with a firearm silencer or firearm muffler, to imprisonment for thirty years." 18 U. S. C. § 924(c)(1) (1988 ed., Supp. V).
A jury determined that petitioners had violated this section by, in the words of the trial judge's instruction, "knowingly us[ing] or carr[ying] a firearm during and in relation to" the commission of a crime of violence. App. 29. At sentencing, the judge found that the "firearms" at issue included certain machineguns (many equipped with silencers) and handgrenades that the defendants actually or constructively had possessed. United States v. Branch, Crim. No. W-93-CR-046 (WD Tex., June 21, 1994), reprinted in App. to Pet. for Cert. 119a, 124a-125a. The judge then imposed the statute's mandatory 30-year prison sentence. Id., at 134a.
Petitioners appealed. Meanwhile, this Court decided that the word "use" in § 924(c)(1) requires evidence of more than "mere possession." Bailey v. United States, 516 U. S. 137, 143 (1995). The Court of Appeals subsequently held that
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