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Syllabus
Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be NOTE: released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321 .
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
UNITED STATES v. HAYES
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the fourth circuit
________________________________________
Argued November 10, 2008Decided February 24, 2009 No. 07608.
________________________________________
In 1996, Congress extended the federal Gun Control Act of 1968’s prohibition on possession of a firearm by convicted felons to include persons convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(9). Responding to a 911 call reporting domestic violence, police officers discovered a rifle in respondent Hayes’s home. Based on this and other evidence, Hayes was charged under §§922(g)(9) and 924(a)(2) with possessing firearms after having been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. The indictment identified as the predicate misdemeanor offense Hayes’s 1994 conviction for battery against his then-wife, in violation of West Virginia law. Hayes moved to dismiss the indictment on the ground that his 1994 conviction did not qualify as a predicate offense under §922(g)(9) because West Virginia’s generic battery law did not designate a domestic relationship between aggressor and victim as an element of the offense. When the District Court denied the motion, Hayes entered a conditional guilty plea and appealed. The Fourth Circuit reversed, holding that a §922(g)(9) predicate offense must have as an element a domestic relationship between offender and victim.
Held: A domestic relationship, although it must be established beyond a reasonable doubt in a §922(g)(9) firearms possession prosecution, need not be a defining element of the predicate offense. Pp. 413.
(a) The definition of misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, contained in §921(a)(33)(A), imposes two requirements. First, the crime must have, as an element, the use or attempted use of physical force, or the threatened use of a deadly weapon. §921(a)(33)(A)(ii). Second, it must be committed by a person who has a specified domestic relationship with the victim. Ibid. The definition does not, however, require the predicate-offense statute to include, as an element, the existence of that domestic relationship. Instead, it suffices for the Government to charge and prove a prior conviction that was, in fact, for an offense committed by the defendant against a spouse or other domestic victim. Pp. 49.
(1) As an initial matter, §921(a)(33)(A)’s use of the singular word element suggests that Congress intended to describe only one required element, the use of force. Had Congress also meant to make the specified relationship a predicate-offense element, it likely would have used the plural elements, as it has done in other offense-defining provisions. See, e.g., 18 U. S. C. §3559(c)(2)(A). Treating the specified relationship as a predicate-offense element is also awkward as a matter of syntax. It requires the reader to regard the use or attempted use of physical force, or the threatened use of a deadly weapon as an expression modified by the relative clause committed by. It is more natural, however, to say a person commit[s] an offense than to say one commit[s] a use. Pp. 56.
(2) The Fourth Circuit’s textual arguments to the contrary are unpersuasive. First, that court noted, clause (ii) is separated from clause (i)which defines misdemeanorby a line break and a semicolon, while clause (ii)’s componentsforce and domestic relationshipare joined in an unbroken word flow. Such less-than-meticulous drafting hardly shows that Congress meant to exclude from §922(g)(9)’s prohibition domestic abusers convicted under generic assault or battery laws. As structured, §921(a)(33)(A) defines misdemeanor crime of domestic violence by addressing in clause (i) the meaning of misdemeanor, and in clause (ii) crime of domestic violence. Because a crime of domestic violence involves both a use of force and a domestic relationship, joining these features together in clause (ii) would make sense even if Congress had no design to confine laws qualifying under §921(a)(33)(A) to those designating as elements both use of force and domestic relationship. A related statutory provision, 25 U. S. C. §2803(3)(C), indicates that Congress did not ascribe substantive significance to the placement of line breaks and semicolons in 18 U. S. C. §921(a)(33)(A). Second, the Fourth Circuit relied on the rule of the last antecedent to read committed by as modifying the immediately preceding use-of-force phrase rather than the earlier word offense. The last-antecedent rule, however, is not an absolute and can assuredly be overcome by other indicia of meaning. Barnhart v. Thomas, 540 U. S. 20 . Applying the rule here would require the Court to accept the unlikely premises that Congress employed the singular element to encompass two distinct concepts, and that it adopted the awkward construction commi[t] a use. The rule, moreover, would render the word committed superfluous, for Congress could have conveyed the same meaning by referring simply to the use of physical force by a current or former spouse . Pp. 69.
(b) Practical considerations strongly support this Court’s reading of §921(a)(33)(A). By extending the federal firearm prohibition to persons convicted of misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence, §922(g)(9)’s proponents sought to close a loophole: Existing felon-in-possession laws often failed to keep firearms out of the hands of domestic abusers, for such offenders generally were not charged with, or convicted of, felonies. Construing §922(g)(9) to exclude the domestic abuser convicted under a generic use-of-force statute would frustrate Congress’ manifest purpose. The statute would have been a dead letter in some two-thirds of the States because, in 1996, only about one-third of them had criminal statutes specifically proscribing domestic violence. Hayes argues that the measure that became §§922(g)(9) and 921(a)(33)(A), though it initially may have had a broadly remedial purpose, was revised and narrowed during the legislative process, but his argument is not corroborated by the revisions he identifies. Indeed, §922(g)(9)’s Senate sponsor observed that a domestic relationship often would not be a designated element of the predicate offense. Such remarks are not controlling, Consumer Product Safety Comm’n v. GTE Sylvania, Inc., 447 U. S. 102 , but the legislative record is otherwise silent. Pp. 1012.
(c) The rule of lenity, on which Hayes also relies, applies only when a statute is ambiguous. Section 921(a)(33)(A)’s definition, though not a model of the careful drafter’s art, is also not grievous[ly] ambigu[ous]. Huddleston v. United States, 415 U. S. 814 . The text, context, purpose, and what little drafting history there is all point in the same direction: Congress defined misdemeanor crime of domestic violence to include an offense committed by a person who had a specified domestic relationship with the victim, whether or not the misdemeanor statute itself designates the domestic relationship as an element of the crime. Pp. 1213.
482 F. 3d 749, reversed and remanded.
Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Breyer, and Alito, JJ., joined, and in which Thomas, J., joined as to all but Part III. Roberts, C. J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Scalia, J., joined.
Justice Ginsburg, Opinion of the Court
This opinion is subject to formal revision before NOTICE: publication in the preliminary print of the United States Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Reports. Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
UNITED STATES, PETITIONER v. RANDY EDWARD
HAYES
on writ of certiorari to the united states court ofappeals for the fourth circuit
________________________________________
[February 24, 2009]
________________________________________
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court.**
The federal Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U. S. C. §921 et seq., has long prohibited possession of a firearm by any person convicted of a felony. In 1996, Congress extended the prohibition to include persons convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. §922(g)(9). The definition of misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, contained in §921(a)(33)(A), is at issue in this case. Does that term cover a misdemeanor battery whenever the battered victim was in fact the offender’s spouse (or other relation specified in §921(a)(33)(A))? Or, to trigger the possession ban, must the predicate misdemeanor identify as an element of the crime a domestic relationship between aggressor and victim? We hold that the domestic relationship, although it must be established beyond a reasonable doubt in a §922(g)(9) firearms possession prosecution, need not be a defining element of the predicate offense.
I
In 2004, law enforcement officers in Marion County, West Virginia, came to the home of Randy Edward Hayes in response to a 911 call reporting domestic violence. Hayes consented to a search of his home, and the officers discovered a rifle. Further investigation revealed that Hayes had recently possessed several other firearms as well. Based on this evidence, a federal grand jury returned an indictment in 2005, charging Hayes, under §§922(g)(9) and 924(a)(2), with three counts of possessing firearms after having been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.
The indictment identified Hayes’s predicate misdemeanor crime of domestic violence as a 1994 conviction for battery in violation of West Virginia law.1
The victim of that battery, the indictment alleged, was Hayes’s then-wifea person who shared a child in common with Hayes and who was cohabitating with . . . him as a spouse. App. 32
Asserting that his 1994 West Virginia battery conviction did not qualify as a predicate offense under §922(g)(9), Hayes moved to dismiss the indictment. Section 922(g)(9), Hayes maintained, applies only to persons previously convicted of an offense that has as an element a domestic relationship between aggressor and victim. The West Virginia statute under which he was convicted in 1994, Hayes observed, was a generic battery proscription, not a law designating a domestic relationship between offender and victim as an element of the offense. The United States District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia rejected Hayes’s argument and denied his motion to dismiss the indictment. 377 F. Supp. 2d 540, 541542 (2005). Hayes then entered a conditional guilty plea and appealed.
In a 2-to-1 decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed. A §922(g)(9) predicate offense, the Court of Appeals held, must have as an element a domestic relationship between the offender and the victim. 482 F. 3d 749, 751 (2007). In so ruling, the Fourth Circuit created a split between itself and the nine other Courts of Appeals that had previously published opinions deciding the same question. 3
According to those courts, §922(g)(9) does not require that the offense predicate to the defendant’s firearm possession conviction have as an element a domestic relationship between offender and victim. We granted certiorari, 552 U. S. ___ (2008), to resolve this conflict.
II
Section 922(g)(9) makes it unlawful for any person who has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence [to] possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition. Section 921(a)(33)(A) defines misdemeanor crime of domestic violence as follows:
[T]he term ‘misdemeanor crime of domestic violence’ means an offense that
(i) is a misdemeanor under Federal, State, or Tribal law; and
(ii) has, as an element, the use or attempted use of physical force, or the threatened use of a deadly weapon, committed by a current or former spouse, parent, or guardian of the victim, by a person with whom the victim shares a child in common, by a person who is cohabitating with or has cohabitated with the victim as a spouse, parent, or guardian, or by a person similarly situated to a spouse, parent, or guardian of the victim (footnotes omitted).
This definition, all agree, imposes two requirements: First, a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence must have, as an element, the use or attempted use of physical force, or the threatened use of a deadly weapon. Second, it must be committed by a person who has a specified domestic relationship with the victim. The question here is whether the language of §921(a)(33)(A) calls for a further limitation: Must the statute describing the predicate offense include, as a discrete element, the existence of a domestic relationship between offender and victim? In line with the large majority of the Courts of Appeals, we conclude that §921(a)(33)(A) does not require a predicate-offense statute of that specificity. Instead, in a §922(g)(9) prosecution, it suffices for the Government to charge and prove a prior conviction that was, in fact, for an offense committed by the defendant against a spouse or other domestic victim.
We note as an initial matter that §921(a)(33)(A) uses the word element in the singular, which suggests that Congress intended to describe only one required element. Immediately following the word element, §921(a)(33)(A)(ii) refers to the use of force (undoubtedly a required element) and thereafter to the relationship between aggressor and victim, e.g., a current or former spouse. The manner in which the offender acts, and the offender’s relationship with the victim, are conceptually distinct attributes. United States v. Meade, 175 F. 3d 215, 218 (CA1 1999). 4
Had Congress meant to make the latter as well as the former an element of the predicate offense, it likely would have used the plural elements, as it has done in other offense-defining provisions. See, e.g., 18 U. S. C. §3559(c)(2)(A) ([T]he term ‘assault with intent to commit rape’ means an offense that has as its elements engaging in physical contact with another person or using or brandishing a weapon against another person with intent to commit aggravated ***ual abuse or ***ual abuse.). Cf. Black’s Law Dictionary 559 (8th ed. 2004) (defining element as [a] constituent part of a claim that must be proved for the claim to succeed ).5
Treating the relationship between aggressor and victim as an element of the predicate offense is also awkward as a matter of syntax. It requires the reader to regard the use or attempted use of physical force, or the threatened use of a deadly weapon as an expression modified by the relative clause committed by. In ordinary usage, however, we would not say that a person commit[s] a use. It is more natural to say that a person commit[s] an offense. See, e.g., United States v. Belless, 338 F. 3d 1063, 1066 (CA9 2003) (One can ‘commit’ a crime or an offense, but one does not ‘commit’ ‘force’ or ‘use.’ ).
In reaching the conclusion that §921(a)(33)(A) renders both the use of force and a domestic relationship between aggressor and victim necessary elements of a qualifying predicate offense, the Fourth Circuit majority relied on two textual arguments. First, the court noted that clause (ii) is separated from clause (i) by a line break and a semicolon; in contrast, the components of clause (ii)force and domestic relationshipare joined in an unbroken word flow. See 482 F. 3d, at 753. Had Congress placed the committed by phrase in its own clause, set off from clause (ii) by a semicolon or a line break, the lawmakers might have better conveyed that committed by modifies only offense and not use or element. Congress’ less-than-meticulous drafting, however, hardly shows that the legislators meant to exclude from §922(g)(9)’s firearm possession prohibition domes-tic abusers convicted under generic assault or battery provisions.
Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be NOTE: released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321 .
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
UNITED STATES v. HAYES
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the fourth circuit
________________________________________
Argued November 10, 2008Decided February 24, 2009 No. 07608.
________________________________________
In 1996, Congress extended the federal Gun Control Act of 1968’s prohibition on possession of a firearm by convicted felons to include persons convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(9). Responding to a 911 call reporting domestic violence, police officers discovered a rifle in respondent Hayes’s home. Based on this and other evidence, Hayes was charged under §§922(g)(9) and 924(a)(2) with possessing firearms after having been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. The indictment identified as the predicate misdemeanor offense Hayes’s 1994 conviction for battery against his then-wife, in violation of West Virginia law. Hayes moved to dismiss the indictment on the ground that his 1994 conviction did not qualify as a predicate offense under §922(g)(9) because West Virginia’s generic battery law did not designate a domestic relationship between aggressor and victim as an element of the offense. When the District Court denied the motion, Hayes entered a conditional guilty plea and appealed. The Fourth Circuit reversed, holding that a §922(g)(9) predicate offense must have as an element a domestic relationship between offender and victim.
Held: A domestic relationship, although it must be established beyond a reasonable doubt in a §922(g)(9) firearms possession prosecution, need not be a defining element of the predicate offense. Pp. 413.
(a) The definition of misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, contained in §921(a)(33)(A), imposes two requirements. First, the crime must have, as an element, the use or attempted use of physical force, or the threatened use of a deadly weapon. §921(a)(33)(A)(ii). Second, it must be committed by a person who has a specified domestic relationship with the victim. Ibid. The definition does not, however, require the predicate-offense statute to include, as an element, the existence of that domestic relationship. Instead, it suffices for the Government to charge and prove a prior conviction that was, in fact, for an offense committed by the defendant against a spouse or other domestic victim. Pp. 49.
(1) As an initial matter, §921(a)(33)(A)’s use of the singular word element suggests that Congress intended to describe only one required element, the use of force. Had Congress also meant to make the specified relationship a predicate-offense element, it likely would have used the plural elements, as it has done in other offense-defining provisions. See, e.g., 18 U. S. C. §3559(c)(2)(A). Treating the specified relationship as a predicate-offense element is also awkward as a matter of syntax. It requires the reader to regard the use or attempted use of physical force, or the threatened use of a deadly weapon as an expression modified by the relative clause committed by. It is more natural, however, to say a person commit[s] an offense than to say one commit[s] a use. Pp. 56.
(2) The Fourth Circuit’s textual arguments to the contrary are unpersuasive. First, that court noted, clause (ii) is separated from clause (i)which defines misdemeanorby a line break and a semicolon, while clause (ii)’s componentsforce and domestic relationshipare joined in an unbroken word flow. Such less-than-meticulous drafting hardly shows that Congress meant to exclude from §922(g)(9)’s prohibition domestic abusers convicted under generic assault or battery laws. As structured, §921(a)(33)(A) defines misdemeanor crime of domestic violence by addressing in clause (i) the meaning of misdemeanor, and in clause (ii) crime of domestic violence. Because a crime of domestic violence involves both a use of force and a domestic relationship, joining these features together in clause (ii) would make sense even if Congress had no design to confine laws qualifying under §921(a)(33)(A) to those designating as elements both use of force and domestic relationship. A related statutory provision, 25 U. S. C. §2803(3)(C), indicates that Congress did not ascribe substantive significance to the placement of line breaks and semicolons in 18 U. S. C. §921(a)(33)(A). Second, the Fourth Circuit relied on the rule of the last antecedent to read committed by as modifying the immediately preceding use-of-force phrase rather than the earlier word offense. The last-antecedent rule, however, is not an absolute and can assuredly be overcome by other indicia of meaning. Barnhart v. Thomas, 540 U. S. 20 . Applying the rule here would require the Court to accept the unlikely premises that Congress employed the singular element to encompass two distinct concepts, and that it adopted the awkward construction commi[t] a use. The rule, moreover, would render the word committed superfluous, for Congress could have conveyed the same meaning by referring simply to the use of physical force by a current or former spouse . Pp. 69.
(b) Practical considerations strongly support this Court’s reading of §921(a)(33)(A). By extending the federal firearm prohibition to persons convicted of misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence, §922(g)(9)’s proponents sought to close a loophole: Existing felon-in-possession laws often failed to keep firearms out of the hands of domestic abusers, for such offenders generally were not charged with, or convicted of, felonies. Construing §922(g)(9) to exclude the domestic abuser convicted under a generic use-of-force statute would frustrate Congress’ manifest purpose. The statute would have been a dead letter in some two-thirds of the States because, in 1996, only about one-third of them had criminal statutes specifically proscribing domestic violence. Hayes argues that the measure that became §§922(g)(9) and 921(a)(33)(A), though it initially may have had a broadly remedial purpose, was revised and narrowed during the legislative process, but his argument is not corroborated by the revisions he identifies. Indeed, §922(g)(9)’s Senate sponsor observed that a domestic relationship often would not be a designated element of the predicate offense. Such remarks are not controlling, Consumer Product Safety Comm’n v. GTE Sylvania, Inc., 447 U. S. 102 , but the legislative record is otherwise silent. Pp. 1012.
(c) The rule of lenity, on which Hayes also relies, applies only when a statute is ambiguous. Section 921(a)(33)(A)’s definition, though not a model of the careful drafter’s art, is also not grievous[ly] ambigu[ous]. Huddleston v. United States, 415 U. S. 814 . The text, context, purpose, and what little drafting history there is all point in the same direction: Congress defined misdemeanor crime of domestic violence to include an offense committed by a person who had a specified domestic relationship with the victim, whether or not the misdemeanor statute itself designates the domestic relationship as an element of the crime. Pp. 1213.
482 F. 3d 749, reversed and remanded.
Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Breyer, and Alito, JJ., joined, and in which Thomas, J., joined as to all but Part III. Roberts, C. J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Scalia, J., joined.
Justice Ginsburg, Opinion of the Court
This opinion is subject to formal revision before NOTICE: publication in the preliminary print of the United States Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Reports. Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
UNITED STATES, PETITIONER v. RANDY EDWARD
HAYES
on writ of certiorari to the united states court ofappeals for the fourth circuit
________________________________________
[February 24, 2009]
________________________________________
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court.**
The federal Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U. S. C. §921 et seq., has long prohibited possession of a firearm by any person convicted of a felony. In 1996, Congress extended the prohibition to include persons convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. §922(g)(9). The definition of misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, contained in §921(a)(33)(A), is at issue in this case. Does that term cover a misdemeanor battery whenever the battered victim was in fact the offender’s spouse (or other relation specified in §921(a)(33)(A))? Or, to trigger the possession ban, must the predicate misdemeanor identify as an element of the crime a domestic relationship between aggressor and victim? We hold that the domestic relationship, although it must be established beyond a reasonable doubt in a §922(g)(9) firearms possession prosecution, need not be a defining element of the predicate offense.
I
In 2004, law enforcement officers in Marion County, West Virginia, came to the home of Randy Edward Hayes in response to a 911 call reporting domestic violence. Hayes consented to a search of his home, and the officers discovered a rifle. Further investigation revealed that Hayes had recently possessed several other firearms as well. Based on this evidence, a federal grand jury returned an indictment in 2005, charging Hayes, under §§922(g)(9) and 924(a)(2), with three counts of possessing firearms after having been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.
The indictment identified Hayes’s predicate misdemeanor crime of domestic violence as a 1994 conviction for battery in violation of West Virginia law.1
The victim of that battery, the indictment alleged, was Hayes’s then-wifea person who shared a child in common with Hayes and who was cohabitating with . . . him as a spouse. App. 32
Asserting that his 1994 West Virginia battery conviction did not qualify as a predicate offense under §922(g)(9), Hayes moved to dismiss the indictment. Section 922(g)(9), Hayes maintained, applies only to persons previously convicted of an offense that has as an element a domestic relationship between aggressor and victim. The West Virginia statute under which he was convicted in 1994, Hayes observed, was a generic battery proscription, not a law designating a domestic relationship between offender and victim as an element of the offense. The United States District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia rejected Hayes’s argument and denied his motion to dismiss the indictment. 377 F. Supp. 2d 540, 541542 (2005). Hayes then entered a conditional guilty plea and appealed.
In a 2-to-1 decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed. A §922(g)(9) predicate offense, the Court of Appeals held, must have as an element a domestic relationship between the offender and the victim. 482 F. 3d 749, 751 (2007). In so ruling, the Fourth Circuit created a split between itself and the nine other Courts of Appeals that had previously published opinions deciding the same question. 3
According to those courts, §922(g)(9) does not require that the offense predicate to the defendant’s firearm possession conviction have as an element a domestic relationship between offender and victim. We granted certiorari, 552 U. S. ___ (2008), to resolve this conflict.
II
Section 922(g)(9) makes it unlawful for any person who has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence [to] possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition. Section 921(a)(33)(A) defines misdemeanor crime of domestic violence as follows:
[T]he term ‘misdemeanor crime of domestic violence’ means an offense that
(i) is a misdemeanor under Federal, State, or Tribal law; and
(ii) has, as an element, the use or attempted use of physical force, or the threatened use of a deadly weapon, committed by a current or former spouse, parent, or guardian of the victim, by a person with whom the victim shares a child in common, by a person who is cohabitating with or has cohabitated with the victim as a spouse, parent, or guardian, or by a person similarly situated to a spouse, parent, or guardian of the victim (footnotes omitted).
This definition, all agree, imposes two requirements: First, a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence must have, as an element, the use or attempted use of physical force, or the threatened use of a deadly weapon. Second, it must be committed by a person who has a specified domestic relationship with the victim. The question here is whether the language of §921(a)(33)(A) calls for a further limitation: Must the statute describing the predicate offense include, as a discrete element, the existence of a domestic relationship between offender and victim? In line with the large majority of the Courts of Appeals, we conclude that §921(a)(33)(A) does not require a predicate-offense statute of that specificity. Instead, in a §922(g)(9) prosecution, it suffices for the Government to charge and prove a prior conviction that was, in fact, for an offense committed by the defendant against a spouse or other domestic victim.
We note as an initial matter that §921(a)(33)(A) uses the word element in the singular, which suggests that Congress intended to describe only one required element. Immediately following the word element, §921(a)(33)(A)(ii) refers to the use of force (undoubtedly a required element) and thereafter to the relationship between aggressor and victim, e.g., a current or former spouse. The manner in which the offender acts, and the offender’s relationship with the victim, are conceptually distinct attributes. United States v. Meade, 175 F. 3d 215, 218 (CA1 1999). 4
Had Congress meant to make the latter as well as the former an element of the predicate offense, it likely would have used the plural elements, as it has done in other offense-defining provisions. See, e.g., 18 U. S. C. §3559(c)(2)(A) ([T]he term ‘assault with intent to commit rape’ means an offense that has as its elements engaging in physical contact with another person or using or brandishing a weapon against another person with intent to commit aggravated ***ual abuse or ***ual abuse.). Cf. Black’s Law Dictionary 559 (8th ed. 2004) (defining element as [a] constituent part of a claim that must be proved for the claim to succeed ).5
Treating the relationship between aggressor and victim as an element of the predicate offense is also awkward as a matter of syntax. It requires the reader to regard the use or attempted use of physical force, or the threatened use of a deadly weapon as an expression modified by the relative clause committed by. In ordinary usage, however, we would not say that a person commit[s] a use. It is more natural to say that a person commit[s] an offense. See, e.g., United States v. Belless, 338 F. 3d 1063, 1066 (CA9 2003) (One can ‘commit’ a crime or an offense, but one does not ‘commit’ ‘force’ or ‘use.’ ).
In reaching the conclusion that §921(a)(33)(A) renders both the use of force and a domestic relationship between aggressor and victim necessary elements of a qualifying predicate offense, the Fourth Circuit majority relied on two textual arguments. First, the court noted that clause (ii) is separated from clause (i) by a line break and a semicolon; in contrast, the components of clause (ii)force and domestic relationshipare joined in an unbroken word flow. See 482 F. 3d, at 753. Had Congress placed the committed by phrase in its own clause, set off from clause (ii) by a semicolon or a line break, the lawmakers might have better conveyed that committed by modifies only offense and not use or element. Congress’ less-than-meticulous drafting, however, hardly shows that the legislators meant to exclude from §922(g)(9)’s firearm possession prohibition domes-tic abusers convicted under generic assault or battery provisions.