A federal appeals court has upheld the conviction and 6.5-year prison sentence of a foreign student who claimed he was tricked into illegally renting firearms by a shooting range’s incomplete paperwork.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled Tuesday that Moctar Ahmadou, a citizen of Niger who entered the U.S. on a student visa, cannot use the defense of “entrapment by estoppel.” Ahmadou argued that because the gun range’s liability waiver failed to list non-immigrant visa holders as prohibited persons, the business effectively misled him into believing his actions were legal.
The court rejected the argument, establishing that a private business’s mistake does not give a defendant a free pass to violate federal law.
The case centers on a May 2021 visit to the Texas Gun Club. Ahmadou, who was under FBI surveillance at the time, rented firearms and signed a standard waiver. The form listed several categories of people banned from possessing guns—such as felons and fugitives—but omitted the specific federal statute prohibiting possession by aliens admitted under nonimmigrant visas.
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Ahmadou’s defense team argued that this omission constituted an “affirmative misrepresentation” of the law.
Writing for the majority, Circuit Judge Jerry E. Smith dismantled that claim. The court joined several other federal circuits in ruling that a federally licensed firearms dealer is a private individual, not a government official. Consequently, a gun store clerk cannot “estop” the government from enforcing criminal laws.
“The form merely implies—it does not affirmatively represent—that the listed categories are the only ones covered,” Judge Smith wrote. “TGC did not ‘actively assure’ Ahmadou that certain conduct is legal.”
While the charge was a technical firearms violation, the context of Ahmadou’s arrest played a significant role in his 78-month sentence—a term well above the standard guidelines.
According to court documents, the FBI began investigating Ahmadou after discovering he had been in contact with Adam Alsahli, the man responsible for the 2020 terror attack on Naval Air Station Corpus Christi. Following his arrest, Ahmadou admitted to agents that his target practice was preparation to “commit jihad overseas if there was a need.”
A search of his electronic devices revealed a cache of ISIS propaganda, including at least 100 videos depicting beheadings.
The district court judge cited these factors during sentencing, noting that while Ahmadou wasn’t charged with a terrorism offense, his “obsession” with violent imagery and association with a known terrorist suggested he posed a danger to the public. Ahmadou challenged this as a violation of his First Amendment rights, claiming the videos were for “religious curiosity.”
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The Fifth Circuit dismissed that explanation. “Someone who claims to be a person of God seeing someone killed on video or having their head chopped off… you only need to see it once, not repeatedly,” the lower court judge noted in the record. The appellate court agreed, calling the sentence substantively reasonable given the defendant’s dangerous interests.
The decision was not unanimous regarding the sentencing. Circuit Judge James L. Dennis dissented in part, arguing that the lower court muddled the procedural lines between a sentencing “departure” (based on specific guidelines) and a “variance” (based on general judicial discretion).
Judge Dennis argued that this ambiguity made it impossible to know exactly why the specific prison term was chosen, stating he would have vacated the sentence and sent the case back for clarification. The majority, however, found the error harmless, finalizing Ahmadou’s 78-month term.
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