Guns, Aliens, Indians, Registration Numbers, and John Jay

From Craghtten v. U.S., decided Wednesday by the Ninth Circuit (Judges Kenneth Lee, Gabriel Sanchez, and Holly Thomas):

Isaac Craghtten—a Canadian-born American Indian and a lawful permanent resident of the United States—tried to acquire a firearm at a gun store in Idaho. But he was unable to do so because he lacks an alien registration or admission number required of non-citizens to complete the federal Firearm Transaction Record Form 4473….

Form 4473’s alien-number requirement for non-citizens comports with the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment guarantees that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” “Like most rights,” however, “the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” U.S. v. Rahimi (2024) (quoting D.C. v. Heller (2008)). We have explained that “the plain text of the Second Amendment only prohibits meaningful constraints on the right to acquire firearms.” Thus, “in assessing whether particular laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms implicate” the Second Amendment right, we analyze “whether a challenged regulation meaningfully impairs an individual’s ability to access firearms.”

The collection of alien-related information required under Form 4473 does not meaningfully constrain the right guaranteed by the Second Amendment. In U.S. v. Manney (9th Cir. 2024), we held that the Second Amendment did not bar a conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(6) for making false statements on Form 4473. We rejected the broad proposition that any law “inhibit[ing]” a person’s “ability to acquire arms by regulating the purchase of firearms” violates the Second Amendment. Such a rule would mean that “even asking an individual to fill out the ATF 4473 form” would “come under [the] Second Amendment’s plain text.” Rather, we concluded that the false-statements prohibition permissibly “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.”

Here, similar to the prohibition on giving false statements on Form 4473, the form’s request for information does not prohibit Craghtten from acquiring or possessing a firearm. He can readily obtain the alien-registration number needed to complete the form. The form merely collects information to “ensure that a purchaser” is eligible to purchase a firearm—in particular, to ensure that the purchaser is not unlawfully in the United States, see 18 U.S.C. § 922(d)(5), (g)(5)—and to facilitate the statutorily required background check….

The requirement to provide an alien-registration number to obtain a firearm is consistent with the laws governing the immigration privileges of Canadian-born American Indians. Those privileges, originally created by Article III of the Jay Treaty of 1794, are codified in 8 U.S.C. § 1359. This provision grants certain American Indians born in Canada only a “right to pass the border without an alien identification number.” They have no bearing on the requirements to obtain a firearm in the United States.

As the district court correctly concluded, requiring Canadian-born American Indians to obtain an alien-registration number to complete Form 4473 before purchasing a firearm is reconcilable with these laws, since such a requirement does not interfere with their right to pass the borders of the United States…