Delligatti v. United States, 604 U.S. ___ (2025)

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

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No. 23–825

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SALVATORE DELLIGATTI, PETITIONER v. UNITED STATES

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the second circuit

[March 21, 2025]

Justice Gorsuch, with whom Justice Jackson joins, dissenting.

Imagine a lifeguard perched on his chair at the beach who spots a swimmer struggling against the waves. Instead of leaping into action, the lifeguard chooses to settle back in his chair, twirl his whistle, and watch the swimmer slip away. The lifeguard may know that his inaction will cause death. Perhaps the swimmer is the lifeguard’s enemy and the lifeguard even wishes to see him die. Either way, the lifeguard is a bad man. In many States, he may be guilty of a serious crime for failing to fulfill his legal duty to help the swimmer. But does the lifeguard’s offense also qualify under 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(3)(A) as a “crime of violence” involving the “use . . . of physical force against the person . . . of another”? The Court thinks so. I do not. Section 924(c)(3)(A) may reach many crimes, but it does not reach crimes of omission.

I

A

As I see it, the Court reaches the wrong destination because it takes a wrong turn at the start. Our cases are replete with reminders that, when faced with a question of statutory interpretation, the text is where we must begin (and often end). Today, however, the Court whistles past the terms Congress gave us in §924(c)(3)(A). Instead, it chooses to begin (and largely end) its analysis of this case with an examination of precedent and assumptions about congressional purposes. Ante, at 5–13. I will get to those matters later. But first, let’s do what the Court does not and look to the text.

Section 924(c)(1) imposes a sentencing enhancement on individuals who “us[e],” “carr[y],” or “posses[s]” firearms “during and in relation to” a “crime of violence.” See ante, at 1–2. Section 924(c)(3)(A) then proceeds to define the phrase “crime of violence” as “an offense that is a felony and . . . has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another.”

Today, the Court reworks that definition at the government’s request. Now, the Court says, a “crime of violence” includes “the knowing or intentional causation of bodily injury . . . by omission.” Ante, at 4. Under that approach, the government admits, even our lifeguard, whose offense stems from inaction, is guilty of a “crime of violence.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 51. The only trouble is, nothing like the rule the government proposes and the Court adopts appears anywhere in §924(c).

To appreciate how unlikely the Court’s new rule is, just walk through the statute’s key definitional terms, beginning with the word “use.” When Congress adopted the current version of §924(c) in 1984, the word “use” meant, as it does today, “to employ,” “to convert to one’s service,” or “to avail one’s self of.” Black’s Law Dictionary 1381 (def. 1) (5th ed. 1979); see also Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary 2012 (def. 1) (2d ed. 1983) (similar). As this Court has long recognized, “[t]hese various definitions of ‘use’ imply action.” Bailey v. United States, 516 U.S. 137, 145 (1995); see also Voisine v. United States, 579 U.S. 686, 692–693, and n. 3 (2016) (collecting cases). And because “use” has an “active meaning,” one does not “use” something through mere “inacti[on],” “inert[ia],” or “nonactiv[ity].” Bailey, 516 U. S., at 148–149.

What must a person actively employ to commit a crime of violence? The statute tells us: “physical force.” §924(c)(3)(A). That is, “[f]orce applied to the body; actual violence.” Black’s Law Dictionary, at 1032. This Court explained as much in Johnson v. United States, 559 U.S. 133 (2010). There, the Court addressed the meaning of the phrase “physical force” in the definition of the term “violent felony” in §924(e). “[P]hysical force,” the Court held, does not reach “emotional” or “intellectual” force. Id., at 138. Nor does it carry its “specialized meaning in the field of physics: a cause of the acceleration of mass.” Id., at 138–139. So letting a pre-existing force of nature run its course does not suffice. Instead, an individual must employ “[f]orce consisting in a physical act.” Id., at 139.

The “physical act” must also be a violent one. Again, consider Johnson. Because §924(e) uses the phrase “physical force” to define what qualifies as a “violent felony,” the Court in Johnson rejected the government’s effort to equate the “physical act” required by the statute with the kind of “mer[e] touching” sufficient to establish the common-law crime of battery. Id., at 139. Resort to common-law battery principles in this statutory scheme, the Court reasoned, would produce “a comical misfit.” Id., at 145. Instead, the Court ruled, the requisite “physical act” must be “violent,” which is to say “extreme” and “severe.” Id., at 140. And if that much follows when the phrase “physical force” is used to define a “violent felony” in §924(e), surely the same must hold true when the same phrase is used in the same section of the U. S. Code to define a “felony” “crime of violence.” §924(c); see Azar v. Allina Health Services, 587 U.S. 566, 574 (2019).

Finally, the statute requires the use of force “against the person or property of another.” Again addressing §924(e), a plurality of this Court has recognized that similar language modifies the “volitional conduct (i.e., the use of force)” discussed in the statute, and in doing so identifies the “conscious object” of a defendant’s “use of physical force.” Borden v. United States, 593 U.S. 420, 431 (2021). All of which suggests that the statute before us captures only active violent force when it is knowingly or intentionally applied against the person or property of another. See id., at 431–432.

Putting these pieces together reveals the implausibility of the Court’s new rule. To commit a “crime of violence,” an individual must (1) actively (not just through inertia) employ (2) a violent or extreme physical act (not a mere touching or pre-existing natural forces) (3) knowingly or intentionally to harm another person or his property. An individual who, as the Court puts it, “causes bodily injury by omission” does not begin to meet these criteria. Ante, at 4. Someone like our lifeguard may knowingly or intentionally cause another’s death by refusing to fulfill his legal duty to act. Maliciously, he may choose to allow natural forces to take their toll. But by remaining in his chair, he does not actively employ even the merest touching, let alone violent physical force. Of course, crimes of omission like our lifeguard’s are serious ones that can invite serious punishments under various state and federal laws. But §924(c)(3)(A) was not written to reach every felony found in our Nation’s many criminal codes. And the statute’s terms simply cannot be stretched to cover crimes of “inact[ion],” “inert[ia],” or “nonacti[vity].” Bailey, 516 U. S., at 149.[1]

B

Not only does the Court fail to grapple with the statutory text, it breezes past the next best evidence of statutory meaning: context. As it turns out, several pieces of contextual evidence, all unmentioned by the Court, weigh against the notion that a §924(c)(3)(A) “crime of violence” can include a crime of omission.

First, consider how informed readers understood the phrase in 1981. When Congress first considered defining “crime of violence” to require the “use of physical force against the person or property of another,” legislators recognized that those terms would not reach omissions. S. Rep. No. 97–307, p. 591 (1981). A Senate report explained that the “operator of a dam [who] refuse[d] to open the floodgates during a flood, thereby placing the residents of an upstream area in jeopardy of their lives” would not commit a “crime of violence” since “he did not . . . use physical force.” Ibid. Of course, “legislative history is not the law” and should not be confused for it. Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 584 U.S. 497, 523 (2018). But the report supplies at least some evidence that ordinary speakers at the time of §924(c)(3)(A)’s enactment understood the phrase “use . . . of physical force” to exclude crimes of omission. See A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 388 (2012) (Scalia & Garner) (recognizing that courts may use legislative history “for the purpose of establishing linguistic usage”).

Second, analyzing “how particular combinations of words are used in a vast database of English prose” can shed light on how ordinary people understand statutory terms. See Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, 592 U.S. 395, 412 (2021) (Alito, J., concurring in judgment). Just such a database—the Corpus of Contemporary American English—contains “forty-seven non-specialist instances of ‘use of physical force.’ ” United States v. Scott, 990 F.3d 94, 129, n. 8 (CA2 2021) (en banc) (Menashi, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Of those references, “all refer to physical contact; none plausibly refer to ‘deriv[ing] service from’ a preexisting physical force.” Ibid. Thus the phrase “prototypically refers to assertive physical contact—‘punches, kicks, slaps[,] and body slams.’ ” Id., at 129.

Third, any other interpretation introduces redundancy into the statutory scheme. Section 924(c)(3) details two separate ways in which an offense may qualify as a “crime of violence.” The first, the focus of our attention, is found in §924(c)(3)(A), or what is sometimes called the elements clause. That provision addresses those felony offenses that have “as an element the use . . . of physical force against the person or property of another.” The second, found in §924(c)(3)(B), or what is sometimes called the residual clause, speaks to felony offenses that “by [their] nature, involv[e] a substantial risk [of] physical force.” To the extent §924(c) might address omission offenses, the residual clause is their natural home. It requires no active employment of physical force, only a risk some such force might be deployed. Expanding the elements clause to reach omission offenses, as the Court does today, goes a long way toward rendering the residual clause pointless. Perhaps the Court considers that outcome a virtue, given that we have held the residual clause unconstitutionally vague and thus unenforceable. United States v. Davis, 588 U.S. 445, 470 (2019). But conscripting one subsection to do the work no longer performed by another makes a hash of the separate and discrete provisions that Congress enacted.

Finally, a look to the broader federal criminal code reinforces what the statutory text suggests. Congress has exhibited no difficulty addressing omission crimes elsewhere, mentioning them explicitly in dozens of provisions up and down the U. S. Code. E.g., 18 U. S. C. §13(a) (“act or omission” is punishable); §542 (similar); §1166(b) (similar); 28 U. S. C. §1346(b)(1) (similar). The fact that Congress “knows exactly” how to reach omission offenses “when it wishes” to do so, yet declined to mention them in 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(3)(A), stands as one more piece of evidence yet that the statute covers only offenses involving the active use of force. Ysleta del Sur Pueblo v. Texas, 596 U.S. 685, 704 (2022).[2]

C

Where does (or should) all this leave us? To determine whether a state offense qualifies as a crime of violence under the elements clause, a court must assess whether the offense “has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force” against another. §924(c)(3)(A). That assessment “does not require—in fact, it precludes—an inquiry into how any particular defendant may commit the crime.” United States v. Taylor, 596 U.S. 845, 850 (2022). Were it otherwise and a sentencing judge could find facts about the defendant’s underlying conduct, serious Sixth Amendment questions might follow. See Erlinger v. United States, 602 U.S. 821, 833 (2024).

Now apply the elements clause’s test to the New York statute at issue before us. That law makes it a crime intentionally “to cause the death of another.” N. Y. Penal Law Ann. §125.25(1) (West 2009); see also ante, at 4, and n. 2. Doubtless, New York’s offense can be (and usually is) committed by affirmative actions involving the use of violent physical force. But, the parties agree, New York’s offense can also be committed by someone, like our lifeguard, who intentionally causes death by failing to fulfill a legal duty requiring him to act. Brief for Petitioner 18; Brief for United States 8. In cases like that, prosecutors can prevail simply by showing that a defendant did nothing when he had a legal duty to do something. And because a defendant can be convicted of the crime without proof that he used, attempted to use, or threatened to use physical force against anyone or anything at all, New York’s offense cannot qualify as a crime of violence under §924(c)(3)(A).

II

The Court chafes at this conclusion. It emphasizes that Mr. Delligatti committed no mere crime of omission but instead plotted to use active force against his victim. Ante, at 2–4. On that much, there is no room for dispute. But neither is there room to dispute that §924(c)(3)(A) focuses on the elements of New York’s offense, not the particulars of Mr. Delligatti’s crime. Some have criticized this feature of the elements clause, and their voices “could hardly be louder.” United States v. Harris, 87 F. 4th 195, 212, and n. 25 (CA3 2023) (Jordan, J., concurring in denial of rehearing en banc) (collecting criticisms). But no amount of wishful thinking can change the nature of the inquiry that §924(c)(3)(A) demands. See Taylor, 596 U. S., at 850.

Ultimately, the Court acknowledges as much. For New York’s offense to qualify as a “crime of violence,” the Court concedes, it must find some way to explain how committing that offense by omission requires the government to prove, as an element, the “use . . . of physical force.” Ante, at 4, 8. To get there, the Court appeals to precedent, ante, at 5–10, and implicit congressional purposes, ante, at 10–11. But, unsurprisingly, our precedents do not require us to ignore the statute’s terms. And no amount of conjecture about implicit congressional purposes can substitute for statutory text.

Start with the Court’s argument from precedent. The Court asks us to believe that its hands are tied by United States v. Castleman, 572 U.S. 157 (2014), and Stokeling v. United States, 586 U.S. 73 (2019). Those two cases, the Court insists, require us to conclude that knowingly or intentionally causing bodily injury by omission always “requires the use of force.” Ante, at 4. So, as the Court tells it, even if the statute’s terms might suggest a different result, respect for stare decisis compels the conclusion that New York’s statute satisfies the elements clause. Ibid.

Notice, though, what’s missing from the Court’s account of precedent. While training its attention on Castleman and Stokeling, the Court neglects so many other relevant cases, relegating them to little more than an afterthought. Ante, at 13–14. Where is Bailey, and its holding that the term “use” in §924(c)(1) carries an “active meaning,” implying “action and implementation,” not mere “inacti[on],” “inert[ia],” or “nonactivit[y]”? 516 U. S., at 145–149. Where is our precedent holding that the same word in the same law normally carries the same meaning—indicating that the term “use” in §924(c)(3)(A) should be read the same way? See Azar, 587 U. S., at 574. Where are our decisions in Leocal and Voisine, interpreting “use” in other analogous contexts to mean “active employment,” Leocal v. Ashcroft, 543 U.S. 1, 9 (2004), or “volitional conduct,” Voisine, 579 U. S., at 693? Where is Johnson’s conclusion that the term “physical force” in §924(e) excludes “its specialized meaning in . . . physics,” requires more than “the merest touching,” and cannot be equated with the common law of battery? 559 U. S., at 138–139. And where is Taylor’s admission that a “crime of violence” under §924(c) “[p]lainly . . . requires the government to prove that the defendant took specific actions against specific persons or their property”? 596 U. S., at 856. Viewing our precedents as a whole leaves little question about how this case should come out. But, rather than engage with so many inconvenient cases, the Court largely ignores them.

Even examined in isolation, the two decisions the Court plucks out of the stack cannot begin to do the work the Court seeks to impress upon them. Take Castleman first. It involved §922(g), which prohibits anyone convicted of a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” from owning a firearm. By statute, Congress has defined the phrase “misdemeanor crime[s] of domestic violence” to reach certain offenses that have “as an element, the . . . use of physical force.” §921(a)(33)(A)(ii). The question for the Court was whether a state domestic-assault statute making it a crime to “intentionally or knowingly caus[e] bodily injury” satisfied that definition. 572 U. S., at 161. The Court held it did. Because §922(g)(9) focuses on misdemeanor crimes of violence, the Court reasoned, it requires no more “physical force” than that required to establish a battery at common law—so “even the slightest offensive touching” will do. Ante, at 6 (quoting Castleman, 572 U. S., at 160–168). And, the Court held, the state offense at issue met that standard because it required proof of “force in the common-law sense.” Id., at 170.

Nothing in Castleman compels the conclusion that omission crimes involve “the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force” sufficient to implicate §924(c)(3)(A). Cf. ante, at 5. In fact, Castleman did not even discuss crimes of omission. And when the Court spoke of what it means to “use physical force,” the Court spoke in active terms, stressing that the “knowing or intentional application of force is a ‘use’ of force.” 572 U. S., at 170 (emphasis added). To be sure, the Court observed that a defendant may use physical force “indirectly, rather than directly.” Id., at 170–171. So, the Court explained, when a defendant “pull[s] the trigger on a gun,” the defendant uses physical force even though the “bullet, not the trigger, . . . strikes the victim.” Ibid. But from that, it does not follow that a defendant “uses physical force” when he does nothing. Cf. ante, at 4–6. Someone like our lifeguard stands worlds away from a shooter who indirectly “uses” a firearm’s explosive force when he pulls the trigger.

To the extent Castleman has anything to say about our case, it does more to hurt than to help the Court’s cause. To reach its holding that common-law battery informs the degree of physical force required by §922(g)(9), Castleman had to distinguish Johnson, where the Court held that the degree of force associated with common-law battery does not qualify as the kind of “physical force” necessary to satisfy §924(e). 559 U. S., at 140; see Part I–A, supra. To distinguish Johnson, Castleman stressed that §922(g)(9) addresses “misdemeanor crime[s] of domestic violence,” while §924(e) focuses on “violent felon[ies].” 572 U. S., at 163–164 (emphasis added). That difference, the Court reasoned, indicates the two statutes demand different degrees of force. Id., at 164. Here, of course, we face a statute like §924(e), one addressing felony crimes of violence, not mere misdemeanors. And if, as Johnson held and Castleman recognized, a mere touching is insufficient to satisfy §924(e)’s “physical force” requirement, it is hard to imagine how complete inaction might fit the bill under §924(c)(3)(A).

With nothing in the Castleman majority opinion to help it, the Court eventually turns to Justice Scalia’s solo concurrence. Ante, at 6–7. There, he rejected the majority’s suggestion that a slight touching qualifies as the “use of physical force” even under §922(g). 572 U. S., at 173–175 (opinion concurring in part and concurring in judgment). The common-law battery standard, he said, plays no role in a statute that does not reference it. Id., at 176. Instead, the author of Johnson explained that he read the phrase “physical force” in both §922(g) and §924(e) to mean what Johnson said it means: “violent force—that is, force capable of causing physical pain or injury.” 572 U. S., at 174 (quoting Johnson, 559 U. S., at 140) (emphasis deleted). Even so, Justice Scalia concurred in the judgment because the state statute at issue in Castleman required proof that the defendant “cause[d] bodily injury,” and, in his view, “it is impossible to cause bodily injury” without employing the kind of violent force Johnson discussed. 572 U. S., at 174.

That syllogism is of no use to the Court here. Justice Scalia may have claimed that a defendant whose actions cause bodily injury necessarily uses violent physical force. Ibid. But he did not claim that a defendant whose failure to act causes bodily injury also necessarily uses violent physical force. Quite the opposite. “[N]onphysical conduct” like “acts of omission,” Justice Scalia said, cannot “possibly be relevant to the meaning of a statute requiring ‘physical force.’ ” Id., at 181 (emphasis deleted; some internal quotation marks omitted). By rejecting the notion that omissions resulting in bodily injury can give rise to liability under statutes like the one before us, Justice Scalia stuck to his view in Johnson that the phrase “use . . . of physical force” captures only “ ‘a category of violent, active crimes.’ ” 559 U. S., at 140 (quoting Leocal, 543 U. S., at 11; emphasis added). And it is a view directly at odds with the Court’s decision today.

Finding Castleman a dry hole, the Court prospects Stokeling. Ante, at 7–8. But the Court does so only briefly, and understandably so. Stokeling held that the phrase “physical force” in §924(e) “includes the amount of force necessary to overcome a [robbery] victim’s resistance.” 586 U. S., at 87. That amount of force, the Court explained, does not encompass “the merest touching,” id., at 83, or simply “snatching of property from another,” id., at 86, but requires more “physical contact,” id., at 83. How any of that helps the Court today mystifies. Our case does not present a question about robbery or purse snatching, and nothing in Stokeling begins to address the question whether a crime of omission entails the “use . . . of physical force.” More than that, Stokeling’s statements about the degree of force required to satisfy §924(e) indicate that something beyond mere inaction is required.[3]

III

Unable to ground its decision in precedent, the Court retreats, at the tail end of its opinion, to an argument about statutory purpose. Ante, at 10–11. The argument runs this way. The Court observes that some notable crimes at common law, including murder and battery, required prosecutors to prove only that the defendant, with a particular mens rea, caused a particular result (e.g., death or bodily injury), whether by affirmative action or by failing to fulfill a legal duty that required him to act. Offenses like that are sometimes called “cause and result” crimes. See 1 LaFave & Scott §3.3, at 283, 293–294. Many contemporary statutes, the New York murder statute before us among them, follow this common-law pattern. And, on the Court’s theory, if §924(c)(3)(A) failed to reach significant cause-and-result crimes like murder and battery simply because they can be committed by omission as well as by act, the statute would not adequately serve its purpose of addressing “crimes of violence.” Ante, at 11. I am not blind to the appeal of the argument, but I find it unpersuasive for a couple reasons.

A

For one thing, there can be little doubt about what the argument is: a resort to unexpressed legislative intentions. Congress, the Court insists, could not possibly have used the phrase “crime of violence” in §924(c)(3)(A) without intending to capture “prototypical” cause-and-result crimes, like murder and battery, long recognized at common law. See ante, at 12.

We have no business entertaining an argument like that. In §924(c)(3)(A), Congress did not ask us to plumb the legislative mind or to do whatever it takes to ensure the statute reaches certain cause-and-result crimes familiar to the common law. Instead, Congress told us exactly what qualifies as a “crime of violence” for purposes of this law: an offense that has “as an element” the “use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force.” §924(c)(3)(A). And, as this Court has often explained, when Congress takes the trouble to supply an express definition, we are obliged to treat it as “virtually conclusive,” even—and perhaps especially—if it “varies” from what we might otherwise understand (or wish) the definition to be. See Department of Agriculture Rural Development Rural Housing Service v. Kirtz, 601 U.S. 42, 59 (2024); Scalia & Garner 228 (“It is very rare that a defined meaning can be replaced with another permissible meaning of the word . . . ”).

The Court offers no persuasive answer to any of this. To be sure, the Court protests that it merely seeks to give voice to the “conventional meaning” of the phrase “crime of violence.” Ante, at 14. But the Court’s focus on that phrase in isolation, followed by an insistence that it must capture common-law cause-and-result crimes like murder and battery—all without any serious attention to the express definition Congress gave us or so much contextual evidence about its meaning—leaves little room for doubt that purpose, not text, is in the driver’s seat today.

In saying that much, I do not mean to suggest courts may never look to the common law to inform statutory text. Sometimes, courts properly consider the common law when interpreting a term of art Congress has adapted from that “old soil.” See, e.g., Sekhar v. United States, 570 U.S. 729, 733 (2013). And, yes, we may sometimes resort to the common law when a statute leaves a gap (say, by failing to supply a burden of proof or the requisite mens rea). See, e.g., Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 262 (1952).

The trouble is, we have nothing like that here. Before us is an express statutory definition that bears no resemblance to traditional common-law terms and leaves no gap to fill. The Court does not claim otherwise. Nor could it, for we have been down this road before. In Johnson, the government asked this Court to draw from common-law liability principles to inform parallel statutory language in §924(e). The Court refused that request because it threatened to generate only a “comical misfit.” 559 U. S., at 145; see also Castleman, 572 U. S., at 175 (opinion of Scalia, J.) (“expansive common-law” principles cannot displace the “statutory text” of §924(e)).

The same holds true here. By looking to the common law today, the Court produces a serious misfit. At common law, an omission could give rise to liability for a cause-and-result crime only if the defendant had a well-defined legal duty to act (think of a doctor’s duty to his patient, or a father’s duty to his child). See 1 LaFave & Scott §3.3, at 283. Yet the Court’s reading of §924(c)(3)(A) renders the presence of a legal duty irrelevant—as the Court sees it, knowingly or intentionally causing bodily injury by failing to act is always a “crime of violence.” Ante, at 4. In the name of revising this statute to better track common-law cause-and-result crimes, then, the Court (ironically) expands the frontiers of criminal liability in ways utterly unknown to the common law.

Along the way, the Court hands us another misfit, too, this one having to do with our own precedents. In Johnson, the government asked the Court to read the phrase “physical force” in a statute addressing “violent felon[ies]” to reach mere touchings consistent with the common law of battery. See 559 U. S., at 140. Here, the government goes a step further, asking us to read the phrase “physical force” in a statute addressing “felony” “crimes of violence” to embrace common-law cause-and-result crimes (including battery) where not even a mere touching is required. How the Court might reject the first request and indulge the second poses quite the puzzle. If there is some way to reconcile today’s decision with Johnson, the Court never explains what it might be.

B

Not only do we have no business guessing about unexpressed legislative intentions. Even were we to play that game, the Court’s intuition that Congress must have wanted §924(c)(3)(A) to reach “prototypical” cause-and-result crimes might well be wrong.

Consider a little more closely the concern the Court asks us to ascribe to Congress. The Court cannot really suppose that Congress wanted us to ensure that cause-and-result crimes committed by omission qualify as “crimes of violence” under §924(c)(3)(A). After all, omission offenses would trigger a sentencing enhancement under §924(c)(1) only in the most unusual circumstances. Just ask yourself: How would our spiteful lifeguard “us[e],” “carr[y],” or “posses[s]” a firearm during and in relation to his crime of inaction? §924(c)(1)(A).

Really, the Court’s argument must rest on a different assumption. It must rest on a view that Congress implicitly wanted §924(c)(1)’s sentencing enhancements to apply to cause-and-effect crimes, like Mr. Delligatti’s, where an individual uses, carries, or possesses a gun to commit a violent act that causes bodily injury. Ante, at 10–11. To ensure that §924(c)(1) does its intended job of reaching those “prototypical” crimes of violence, the Court goes big. It asks us to accept the (implausible) notion that cause-and-result crimes resulting in bodily injury always, even when committed by omission, require the government to prove as an element “the use . . . of physical force.” §924(c)(3)(A); ante, at 10.

But even if Congress implicitly wanted §924(c)(1)’s sentencing enhancements to reach cause-and-result crimes that are committed by act and cause bodily harm, there is no reason to suppose Congress wanted us to mangle §924(c)(3)(A) to get the job done. Recall that §924(c)(1)’s sentencing enhancements apply to a “crime of violence” as that phrase is defined either in the elements clause before us (§924(c)(3)(A)) or in the residual clause (§924(c)(3)(B)). See Part I–C, supra. By its terms, the latter clause “sweeps more broadly.” Davis, 588 U. S., at 467 (internal quotation marks omitted). It does not require an examination of the elements the government must prove to secure a conviction, let alone demand that those elements require proof of the use of physical force. Instead, the residual clause reaches offenses that, in “ordinary” cases, pose a “risk of physical injury.” Id., at 452 (quoting §924(e)(2)(B)(ii)). And Congress might well have thought the residual clause the more natural home for cause-and-result crimes like murder and battery, for even if those offenses do not require the government to prove as an element the use of physical force, as committed those offenses typically involve physical force (and certainly the risk of it).

Equally, Congress might have had another idea in mind. Maybe Congress did not mean for §924(c)(1) to reach all murder and battery offenses. Maybe Congress wanted §924(c)(1) to reach only those murder and battery offenses that require the government to prove, as an element, the use of physical force—or that, by their nature, involve a substantial risk of such force. After all, States write their criminal laws in different ways. And, doubtless, some states draft some murder and battery statutes to focus on the degree of force a defendant uses, not just the result he brings about. Maybe Congress honed in on offenses like that, not all murder and battery crimes, because it thought those offenses especially deserving of additional punishment. See, e.g., 18 U. S. C. §1111(a) (murder involving the torture of a child).

That possibility seems all the more likely because §924(c)(1)’s enhancements are not the be-all and end-all of federal sentencing. Even when §924(c)(1)’s enhancements do not apply, sentencing courts enjoy ample tools to ensure a defendant’s punishment fits his crime. And that’s nowhere truer than when it comes to those who commit serious crimes like murder and battery. In this respect, Mr. Delligatti’s case is illustrative. The district court sentenced him to 25 years in prison—20 years for his offenses related to attempted murder, plus 5 additional years under §924(c). See Judgment in No. 15–491 (SDNY, Aug. 20, 2018), ECF Doc. 729, p. 3. But even without a §924(c) enhancement, the advisory guidelines suggested, and the judge was free to impose, a sentence of up to 28 years. See Sentencing Submission for United States, ECF Doc. 712, at 10–14; accord, App. to Pet. for Cert. 28a. The judge, too, was free to depart or vary from the recommended guidelines range to impose an even harsher sentence had she deemed it appropriate. See 18 U. S. C. §3553(b).

Nor would recognizing that §924(c)(3)(A) fails to reach Mr. Delligatti’s offense guarantee him some windfall. Doing so would leave the district court free, on remand, to impose exactly the same sentence it did the first time around, or maybe even a harsher one yet. See Dean v. United States, 581 U.S. 62, 69 (2017). Nothing about Mr. Delligatti’s case is unique either. With or without a §924(c)(1) enhancement, those convicted of serious offenses in our federal criminal justice system routinely face serious sentences and judges amply equipped with the means to issue them.

*

In the end, the Court’s decision today comes up short on every count. It neglects §924(c)(3)(A)’s definitional terms and their ordinary meaning. It ignores important contextual clues. It leans heavily on only two, ultimately unhelpful, precedents without addressing others. And it resorts to conjecture about implicit congressional purposes that is unconvincing on its own terms. To my mind, none of the Court’s arguments can overcome the hard fact that crimes of omission do not involve the “use . . . of physical force against another.” Individuals like our lifeguard who commit offenses by omission may face punishment under many other criminal laws, but §924(c)(3)(A) does not reach them. Even if a reasonable doubt remained about that common-sense conclusion (I confess I harbor none), the rule of lenity would require us to reach the same result anyway. See Bittner v. United States, 598 U.S. 85, 101 (2023). For all these reasons, I respectfully dissent.