opinion: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Herman Louis WILLIAMS, Appellant.
  No. 73-1471.
  United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
  Argued Aug. 4, 1973.
  Decided Oct. 8, 1973.
  Richard J. Stahl, Court-appointed counsel, Richmond, Va. (Horwitz, Baer & Neblett, Inc., Richmond, Va., on brief), for appellant.
  Raymond A. Carpenter, Asst. U. S. Atty. (Brian P. Gettings, U. S. Atty., on brief), for appellee.
  Before HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge, and FIELD and WIDENER, Circuit Judges.
  FIELD, Circuit Judge:
  This case involves the construction of 18 U.S.C. § 922(e), a section of the Gun Control Act of 1968, regulating the shipment in interstate or foreign commerce of firearms and ammunition by common or contract carrier. Section 922(e) makes it unlawful “for any person knowingly to deliver or cause to be delivered to any common or contract carrier for transportation or shipment in interstate or foreign commerce, to persons other than licensed importers, licensed manufacturers, licensed dealers, or licensed collectors, any package or other container in which there is any firearm or ammunition without written notice to the carrier that such firearm or ammunition is being transported or shipped; except that any passenger who owns or legally possesses a firearm or ammunition being transported aboard any common or contract carrier for movement with the passenger in interstate or foreign commerce may deliver said firearm or ammunition into the custody of the pilot, captain, conductor or operator of such common or contract carrier for the duration of the trip without violating any of the provisions of this chapter.” (Emphasis added).
  In November, 1971, Herman Louis Williams boarded an Altair Air Lines flight from Baltimore, Maryland, to Richmond, Virginia. Before boarding the plane, Williams handed his luggage to the pilot who placed it in the nose cone of the plane where it remained throughout the flight. Williams did not inform the pilot orally or in writing that a firearm was in the luggage. Williams was indicted for violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(e) and was found guilty by the district judge sitting without a jury.
  Before the district court and this court Williams has maintained that he qualifies under the exception clause of Section 922(e) which we have emphasized above. It is undisputed that Williams was a passenger who legally owned or possessed the firearm in question which was transported in interstate commerce aboard a common carrier. At issue is whether Williams’ transfer of the luggage to the plane’s pilot without informing him of its contents satisfied the requirement that the passenger “deliver said firearm * * * into the custody of the pilot.” Williams argues that a relinquishment of control is all that the statute requires of a passenger and in support of his argument notes the absence in the exception clause of an express notice requirement such as that imposed on certain shippers.
  While it is true that criminal statutes are to be strictly construed and that ambiguities are to be resolved in favor of the defendant, statutes are not to be construed in a manner which would defeat their clear purpose. United States v. Cook, 384 U.S. 257, 262, 86 S.Ct. 1412, 16 L.Ed.2d 516 (1966); United States v. Brown, 333 U.S. 18, 25 and 26, 68 S.Ct. 376, 92 L.Ed. 442 (1948); Stock v. Department of the Air Force, 186 F.2d 968, 972 (4 Cir. 1950). The language of Section 922(e) is manifestly clear in its requirement that firearms and ammunition be brought to the carrier’s attention, either by written notice in the case of a shipper or by a delivery into the carrier’s custody of the firearm itself in the case of a passenger. Carrying Williams’ argument to the absurd extreme, a dealer, barred from shipping a single firearm in interstate commerce aboard a common carrier without giving the carrier written notice, could ship any quantity of firearms and ammunition in sealed containers and evade the.requirement of written notice by the simple expedient of flying as a passenger and carrying the containers as luggage. Such surreptitious traffic in firearms and ammunition was the precise menace at which the Gun Control Act of 1968 was directed. As the court in United States v. Burton, 351 F.Supp. 1372 (W.D.Mo.1972), noted, the entire statutory scheme is aimed at restricting the unchecked movement of firearms and ammunition which undermines legitimate efforts to impose reasonable restrictions upon their possession and use.
  The legislative history accompanying Section 922(e) [reported as 922(d)] reveals that the notice requirements were designed “to make more effective the succeeding subsection [enacted as 922(f); reported as 922(e)] which prohibits a carrier from transporting or delivering a firearm in violation of the chapter.” 3 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News, p. 4420 (90th Cong., 2d Sess.1968). Plainly, if a carrier is not put on notice of a firearm’s presence it cannot discharge its legal obligation to insure that the transportation is lawful. The absence of an explicit requirement of notice in the passenger exception was obviously predicated on the common sense belief that delivery of firearms and ammunition into a common carrier’s custody would be done in a manner which would make the carrier aware of that fact.
  If the Congressional purpose in enacting the Gun Control Act of 1968 is to be realized, “custody” must be construed to mean a transfer of control in a manner which gives the carrier actual notice of the presence of a firearm. Any other construction would be sophistic and effectively defeat that purpose.
  Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is
  Affirmed.
instruction: What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
  Intervenors who participated as parties at the courts of appeals should be counted as either appellants or respondents when it can be determined whose position they supported. For example, if there were two plaintiffs who lost in district court, appealed, and were joined by four intervenors who also asked the court of appeals to reverse the district court, the number of appellants should be coded as six.
  In some cases there is some confusion over who should be listed as the appellant and who as the respondent. This confusion is primarily the result of the presence of multiple docket numbers consolidated into a single appeal that is disposed of by a single opinion. Most frequently, this occurs when there are cross appeals and/or when one litigant sued (or was sued by) multiple litigants that were originally filed in district court as separate actions. The coding rule followed in such cases should be to go strictly by the designation provided in the title of the case. The first person listed in the title as the appellant should be coded as the appellant even if they subsequently appeared in a second docket number as the respondent and regardless of who was characterized as the appellant in the opinion.
  To clarify the coding conventions, consider the following hypothetical case in which the US Justice Department sues a labor union to strike down a racially discriminatory seniority system and the corporation (siding with the position of its union) simultaneously sues the government to get an injunction to block enforcement of the relevant civil rights law. From a district court decision that consolidated the two suits and declared the seniority system illegal but refused to impose financial penalties on the union, the corporation appeals and the government and union file cross appeals from the decision in the suit brought by the government. Assume the case was listed in the Federal Reporter as follows:
  United States of America,
  Plaintiff, Appellant
  v
  International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
  Defendant, Appellee.
  International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
  Defendants, Cross-appellants
  v
  United States of America.
  Widgets, Inc. & Susan Kuersten Sheehan, President & Chairman
  of the Board
  Plaintiff, Appellants,
  v
  United States of America,
  Defendant, Appellee.
  This case should be coded as follows:Appellant = United States, Respondents = International Brotherhood of Widget Workers Widgets, Inc., Total number of appellants = 1, Number of appellants that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officials" = 1, Total number of respondents = 3, Number of respondents that fall into the category "private business and its executives" = 2, Number of respondents that fall into the category "groups and associations" = 1.
  Note that if an individual is listed by name, but their appearance in the case is as a government official, then they should be counted as a government rather than as a private person. For example, in the case "Billy Jones & Alfredo Ruiz v Joe Smith" where Smith is a state prisoner who brought a civil rights suit against two of the wardens in the prison (Jones & Ruiz), the following values should be coded: number of appellants that fall into the category "natural persons" =0 and number that fall into the category "state governments, their agencies, and officials" =2. A similar logic should be applied to businesses and associations. Officers of a company or association whose role in the case is as a representative of their company or association should be coded as being a business or association rather than as a natural person. However, employees of a business or a government who are suing their employer should be coded as natural persons. Likewise, employees who are charged with criminal conduct for action that was contrary to the company policies should be considered natural persons.
  If the title of a case listed a corporation by name and then listed the names of two individuals that the opinion indicated were top officers of the same corporation as the appellants, then the number of appellants should be coded as three and all three were coded as a business (with the identical detailed code). Similar logic should be applied when government officials or officers of an association were listed by name.
  Your specific task is to determine the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "private business and its executives". If the total number cannot be determined (e.g., if the appellant is listed as "Smith, et. al." and the opinion does not specify who is included in the "et.al."), then answer 99.