A ruling out of Brooklyn is detonating inside the federal system: a U.S. judge has held that federal first-degree murder is not automatically a “crime of violence” for purposes of key firearms statutes—an outcome that sounds impossible until you see the trap hidden in the law.

In a Feb. 6, 2026 decision, U.S. District Judge Brian M. Cogan dismissed two firearms counts—charges that alleged brandishing/discharging a firearm during a crime of violence and causing death by firearm during a crime of violence—because the government’s chosen predicate offense, first-degree murder under 18 U.S.C. § 1111(a), does not categorically qualify as a “crime of violence” under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c).

The case involves alleged al-Qaeda-linked defendant Fawaz Ould Ahmed Ould Ahemeid, charged in connection with deadly 2015 attacks in Bamako, Mali, including the Radisson Blu hotel assault in which U.S. citizen Anita Ashok Datar was killed, according to the Justice Department.

So how can a murder not be “violent”? The answer is the categorical approach: courts must ignore what prosecutors say happened and instead ask what the statute can cover in its least forceful form. Cogan openly acknowledged the “absurdity” and “common sense” clash—but said Supreme Court precedent forces judges into this elements-only analysis.

This is the loophole critics fear: a hyper-technical definition of “crime of violence” that can erase stacked gun counts—without erasing the underlying murder and terrorism-related allegations. The ruling is already fueling calls for Congress to rewrite the statute so the legal label matches the real-world horror it describes.