In United States v. Manney, --- F.4th ---, No. 23-716 (9th Cir. 2024), the Court affirmed Gail Manney’s conviction for violating 18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(6), which makes it a crime for any person in connection with the acquisition or attempted acquisition of any firearm knowingly to make any false or fictitious oral or written statement with respect to any fact material to the lawfulness of the sale of such firearm.
In short, the Court held that because the Second Amendment does not protect an individual’s false statements, the conduct that § 922(a)(6) regulates falls outside the scope of the Second Amendment’s plain text.
In support of its conclusion, the Court explained:
Although the Supreme Court has yet to expound on all conduct the Second Amendment’s plain text covers, it has not held that an individual can invoke the Second Amendment’s constitutional protection by describing the conduct in question at such a high level of generality. Nor has the Court held that every requirement making it slightly more difficult to possess a firearm demands a full historical inquiry into its origin. Both Bruen and Rahimi dealt with prohibitions, or near prohibitions, on the ability to possess firearms
[W]e find that § 922(a)(6) prohibits making false statements. The statute only relates to firearms insofar as it regulates statements made in connection with firearm acquisitions and information “material to the lawfulness of the sale.” But the regulated conduct is unrelated to the possession of a firearm. In other words, the statute regulates statements made by the individual purchasing a firearm to ensure that a purchaser is not lying to a firearms dealer about who is purchasing the firearm. The fact that the information a purchaser provides may trigger a separate statute that may bar the purchase of a firearm does not transform § 922(a)(6) into a statute regulating the possession of firearms.
