In the
    United States Court of Appeals
                 For the Seventh Circuit
                     ____________________

No. 24-1130
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                                                   Plaintiff-Appellee,

                                 v.

QUINTIN T. FERGUSON,
                                               Defendant-Appellant.
                     ____________________

         Appeal from the United States District Court for the
         Northern District of Indiana, South Bend Division.
            No. 3:21CR30 — Damon R. Leichty, Judge.
                     ____________________

   ARGUED FEBRUARY 4, 2025 — DECIDED MARCH 17, 2025
                ____________________

   Before SYKES, Chief Judge, and EASTERBROOK and PRYOR,
Circuit Judges.
    EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. Quintin Ferguson was sen-
tenced to 240 months’ imprisonment for violating 

(i). The district court treated him as a career offender un-
der U.S.S.G. §4B1.1(a) after concluding that §844(i) is a “crime
of violence”. Classification as a career offender is appropriate
only if the current conviction and at least two prior convic-
tions are for felony drug offenses or crimes of violence.
2                                                             No. 24-1130

Guideline 4B1.2(a)(2) specifies that “arson” is a “crime of vio-
lence”. In this appeal Ferguson denies that a violation of
§844(i) counts as “arson” for the purpose of §4B1.2(a)(2).
    Section 844(i) provides:
    Whoever maliciously damages or destroys, or aGempts to damage
    or destroy, by means of fire or an explosive, any building, vehicle,
    or other real or personal property used in interstate or foreign
    commerce or in any activity affecting interstate or foreign com-
    merce shall be imprisoned for not less than 5 years and not more
    than 20 years, fined under this title, or both; and if personal injury
    results to any person, including any public safety officer perform-
    ing duties as a direct or proximate result of conduct prohibited by
    this subsection, shall be imprisoned for not less than 7 years and
    not more than 40 years, fined under this title, or both; and if death
    results to any person, including any public safety officer perform-
    ing duties as a direct or proximate result of conduct prohibited by
    this subsection, shall also be subject to imprisonment for any term
    of years, or to the death penalty or to life imprisonment.

Maliciously destroying a building or vehicle by fire or explo-
sives sounds like arson, but Ferguson says that it is not be-
cause §844(i) does not require proof that a defendant who
burned his own property did so to collect insurance.
     The parties agree that “arson” means generic arson rather
than any particular variant. Observing that the American Law
Institute’s Model Penal Code §220.1 (1962), limits its definition,
if the defendant owned the torched property, to acts designed
to bilk insurers, Ferguson insists that §844(i) therefore departs
from generic arson and cannot be treated as a crime of vio-
lence under §4B1.2(a)(2).
   The Sentencing Guidelines do not define “arson” as that
term is used in §4B1.2—though Appendix A to the Guidelines
directs violations of §844(i) to be sentenced under U.S.S.G.
No. 24-1130                                                    3

§2K1.4, which bears the caption “Arson; Property Damage by
Use of Explosives”. What is more, 

 treats
§844(i) as an “arson offense”. Perhaps these cross-references
suffice to call the §844(i) crime “arson.”
    The parties’ shared assumption that we must ask whether
§844(i) deserves the label “generic arson” comes from the way
the Supreme Court has treated the word “burglary” in 

(e), the Armed Career Criminal Act, which classi-
fies burglary as a crime of violence for some sentencing pur-
poses. See Taylor v. United States, 

 (1990). The Jus-
tices noted that §924(e) does not define “burglary” and con-
cluded that it was necessary to devise a generic definition. The
cross-reference from Appendix A in the Guidelines may make
that step unnecessary when dealing with §4B1.2, but, as the
parties have not argued this, we shall assume for current pur-
poses that we need to define “generic arson” as Taylor and its
successors needed to define “generic burglary.” (As Taylor did
when defining generic burglary, we ask whether the elements
of the statute fit the generic definition, not what the defendant
did in fact. This is known as the categorical approach.)
    This isn’t the first time we have been asked to define “ge-
neric arson.” United States v. Misleveck, 

 (7th
Cir. 2013), and United States v. Gamez, 

 (7th
Cir. 2024), both adopt “the intentional or malicious burning
of any property” as the definition of the generic offense. See
also Brown v. Caraway, 

, 589–91 (7th Cir. 2013)
(willful or malicious burning). The definition does not limit
coverage to the burning of a stranger’s property plus the
burning of one’s own property to defraud an insurer. Section
844(i) fits comfortably within the generic definition that we
have articulated. (The mental-state element in §844(i) is
4                                                   No. 24-1130

malice; we need not consider whether other flavors of intent,
such as a design to burn charcoal briquejes in a grill on one’s
patio, would qualify.)
    Ferguson wants us to add an insurance qualifier to the de-
struction of one’s own property, because the Supreme Court
mentioned §220.1 of the Model Penal Code in Begay v. United
States, 

 (2008). Yet Begay did not define “ge-
neric arson”. The question it resolved was whether driving
under the influence of alcohol was a crime of violence un-
der 

(e)(2)(B)(ii), which refers to “burglary, ar-
son, or extortion, involves use of explosives, or otherwise in-
volves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physi-
cal injury”. The Court mentioned arson to illustrate the sort of
risks the “otherwise involves” language was gejing at; it used
the Model Penal Code only to observe that its text defined a
crime that poses serious risks to persons and property. The
Justices did not say anything about the effect of the Model Pe-
nal Code’s insurance proviso or the extent to which that clause
affects the federal definition of “arson.”
    Although the Supreme Court has never tried to define “ge-
neric arson,” its series of cases defining “generic burglary” il-
luminates the path. Taylor referred to definitions commonly
followed under state law when §924(e) was enacted. 

. It wrote: “Congress meant by ‘burglary’ the generic
sense in which the term is now used in the criminal codes of
most States.” 

. And it provisionally defined this as a
crime “having the basic elements of unlawful or unprivileged
entry into, or remaining in, a building or structure, with intent
to commit a crime.” 

. Many federal courts later held
that this excludes entries into other dwelling places, such as
houseboats. United States v. StiF, 

 (2018), asked
No. 24-1130                                                   5

whether a state law making it a crime to enter a mobile home,
trailer, or tent designed for overnight accommodation should
be treated as generic burglary. It answered “yes” after can-
vassing state law and finding that statutes in force at the rele-
vant time largely called this offense burglary. See also
Mathis v. United States, 

 (2016).
   The Supreme Court’s approach to burglary under §924(e)
leads us to ask: When the Sentencing Guidelines were
adopted in 1987, and when the career-offender guideline was
added in 1989, did state laws defining arson require proof that
a person who maliciously burned his own property did so in
order to collect insurance? Did they require proof that the
property belonged to another? Both answers are no.
    By 1987 none of the states limited arson to burning the
property of another. See John Poulos, The Metamorphosis of the
Law of Arson, 51 Missouri L. Rev. 295, 446 (1986). And only two
states (North Dakota and Wisconsin) then followed the Model
Penal Code’s definition of arson as the burning of one’s own
property only when the goal was to collect insurance pro-
ceeds. The other states all treated arson as encompassing the
burning of one’s own property for reasons unrelated to the
collection of insurance, including if the property was occu-
pied (e.g., Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Kentucky), if the
burning put another person at risk of harm whether or not the
property was in use as a residence (e.g., Arkansas, Georgia,
Ohio), or if the burning put another’s property at risk of harm
(e.g., Pennsylvania, Maine). The Appendix to this opinion,
which we have modeled on the Appendix to StiF, collects the
state arson statutes in force in 1987.
   When the Guidelines were adopted, the approach to arson
prevailing among the states largely matched the definition in
6                                                No. 24-1130

§844(i). We therefore hold that a conviction under §844(i) is
one for “arson” as that term appears in the career-offender
guideline.
                                                   AFFIRMED
No. 24-1130                                                      7

                        APPENDIX

    ALA. CODE §§ 13A-7-41, 13A-7-43 (1977); id. § 13A-7-42
(1983); ALASKA STAT. §11.46.410 (1978); id. § 11.46.400 (1983);
ARIZ. REV. STAT. ANN. §§ 13-1703; 13-1704 (1987); ARK. CODE
ANN. §41-1902 (1987); CAL. PENAL CODE §451 (1986); COLO.
REV. STAT. §§ 18-4-103; 18-4-105 (1977); id. §18-4-102 (1986);
CONN. GEN. STAT. §53a-113 (1980); id. §53a-111 (1982); id. §53a-
112 (1984); DEL. CODE ANN. tit. 11, §§ 801, 802, 803 (1972); D.C.
CODE §§ 22-301, 22-302 (1901); id. § 22-303 (1965); FLA. STAT.
§806.01 (1979); GA. CODE ANN. §§ 26-1401, 26-1402, 26-1403
(1979); HAW. REV. STAT. §§ 708-820, 708-821, 708-823 (1984); id.
§708-822 (1986); IDAHO CODE §§ 18-801, 18-802 (1972); ILL.
REV. STAT. ch. 38 §20-1 (1973); id. §20-1.1 (1985); IND. CODE §35-
43-1-1 (1982); IOWA CODE §§ 712.1, 712.3, 712.4 (1976); id.
§712.2 (1984); KAN. STAT. ANN. §21-3718 (1969); KY. REV. STAT.
ANN. §§ 513.020, 513.030, 513.040 (1982); LA. STAT. ANN.
§14:53 (1980); id. §14:51 (1981); id. §14:52 (1985); ME. STAT. tit.
17-A, §802 (1983); MD. CODE Art. 27, §6 (1969); MASS. GEN.
LAWS ch. 266, §1 (1974); MICH. COMP. LAWS §750.72 (1945);
MINN. STAT. §609.563 (1985); id. §§ 609.561, 609.562 (1986);
MISS. CODE ANN. §§ 97-17-1, 97-17-5, 97-17-7, 97-17-9 (1932);
id. §97-17-3 (1958); id. § 97-17-11 (1986); MO. REV. STAT.
§§ 569.040, 569.050 (1987); MONT. CODE ANN. §§ 45-6-102; 45-
6-103 (1985); NEB. REV. STAT. § 28-504 (1977); id. §§ 28-502, 28-
503 (1981); NEV. REV. STAT. §§ 205.015, 205.020, 205.025 (1979);
id. §205.010 (1987); N.H. REV. STAT. ANN. §634:1 (1975); N.J.
STAT. ANN. §2C:17-1 (1981); N.M. STAT. ANN. §30-17-5 (1970);
id. §30-17-6 (1963); 

, 150.10, 150.15
(McKinney 1979); 

 §150.20 (McKinney 1984); N.C. GEN.
STAT. §§ 14-58.2, 14-63, 14-64, 14-65, 14-66 (1979); id. §§ 14-58,
14-59, 14-60, 14-61, 14-62, 14-62.1, 14-67.1 (1981); N.D. CENT.
8                                                   No. 24-1130

CODE §12.1-21-01 (1979); OHIO REV. CODE ANN. §§ 2902.02,
2902.03 (1982); OKLA. STAT. tit. 21, §§ 1401, 1402, 1403, 1404
(1979); OR. REV. STAT. §§ 164.315, 164.325 (1971); 18 PA. CONS.
STAT. § 3301 (1982); 11 R.I. GEN. LAWS §§ 11-4-6, 11-4-8 (1980);
id. §§ 11-4-2, 11-4-3, 11-4-4, 11-4-5, 11-4-7 (1983); S.C. CODE
ANN. §16-11-110 (1982); S.D. CODIFIED LAWS §§ 22-33-1, 22-33-
2 (1977); TENN. CODE ANN. §39-1-505 (1968); id. §§ 39-3-202,
39-3-205 (1984); TEX. PENAL CODE ANN. § 28.02 (1981); UTAH
CODE ANN. §§ 76-6-102, 76-6-103 (1986); VT. STAT. ANN. tit. 13,
§ 501 (1957); id. §§ 502, 503, 504, 505 (1981); VA. CODE ANN.
§§ 18.2-79, 18.2-82, 18.2-86 (1975); id. §18.2-77 (1978); id.
§§ 18.2-80, 18.2-81 (1981); WASH. REV. CODE §9A.48.030 (1975);
id. §9A.48.020 (1981); W. VA. CODE §§ 61-3-1, 61-3-2, 61-3-4
(1935); id. § 61-3-3 (1957); WIS. STAT. §§ 943.02, 943.03, 943.04
(1977); WYO. STAT. ANN. §§ 6-3-101, 6-3-102 (1983); id. §§ 6-3-
103, 6-3-104 (1984).