United States of America v. Echo A. Scheidt

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 23-2567
U NITED S TATES OF A MERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
ECHO A. S CHEIDT,
Defendant-Appellant.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Indiana, Fort Wayne Division.
No. 1:22-cr-00049-HAB-SLC-1 — Holly A. Brady, Chief Judge.
____________________
A RGUED M ARCH 28, 2024 — DECIDED J UNE 7, 2024
____________________
Before BRENNAN , S CUDDER , and LEE, Circuit Judges.
S CUDDER , Circuit Judge. Many federal statutes make it a
crime to knowingly provide false statements to the govern-
ment and to obstruct justice. This is true when it comes to in-
terviews with law enforcement agents, filing tax returns, and
applying for federal licenses. And it is also true when it comes
to buying a firearm from a licensed dealer, as 18 U.S.C.
§ 922(a)(6) prohibits any person from knowingly making a
false oral or written statement on a fact material to a

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2 No. 23-2567
transaction. Echo Scheidt did just that: she knowingly in-
cluded false information in a Firearms Transaction Record, or
ATF Form 4473, in five separate gun purchases. The false
statements concerned law enforcement because it turned out
Scheidt resold the firearms, with two of the guns then being
used in two shootings, including a murder. We affirm her
conviction. Adhering to our precedent, we reject her conten-
tion that the Second Amendment framework announced in
New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1
(2022), requires an in-depth examination of founding era his-
tory confirming the legal soundness of § 922(a)(6)’s prohibi-
tion on knowingly falsifying a document like ATF Form 4473
when buying a firearm.
I
A
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives
requires firearms dealers to keep certain records relating to
gun sales to assist federal authorities in both enforcing gun
registration requirements and tracing firearms used in crimes.
See 18 U.S.C. § 923(g)(1)(A). Implementing this obligation, the
Bureau created ATF Form 4473—a standardized form that
both purchasers must complete before acquiring a firearm
and that dealers must maintain after a sale. See id.; see also 27
C.F.R. §§ 478.21–478.22, 479.21.
Form 4473 requires gun purchasers to provide personal in-
formation, such as their name, birth date, height, weight, and
address. In no uncertain terms, the Form also tells buyers to
tell the truth, for the “making [of] any false … written state-
ment … with respect to [the] transaction, is a crime punisha-
ble as a felony under Federal law, and may also violate State

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No. 23-2567 3
and/or local law.” See Firearms Transaction Record, ATF.gov,
available at https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/4473-part-1-
firearms-transaction-record-over-counter-atf-form-
53009/download (last visited June 6, 2024).
Between February 6 and April 5, 2022, Echo Scheidt pur-
chased five handguns from two Indiana gun stores in five
separate transactions. Each time she completed ATF Form
4473 and each time provided false addresses. Even though
she resided in Fort Wayne, she listed home addresses in Mar-
ion and Upland, Indiana.
The firearms dealers did not immediately catch the false
statements, leading to Scheidt acquiring five handguns. She
then resold each of them and, following two shootings, in-
cluding a murder in Elwood, Indiana, the authorities traced
all five handguns back to her.
While investigating the shootings, the officers went to
both the Upland and Marion addresses Scheidt listed on Form
4473. They learned that she did not live at either address. The
Upland address was the site of an abandoned home, and the
resident at the Marion address stated that Scheidt had not
lived there for several years.
The Marion County Police Department eventually located
Scheidt and asked her to submit to an interview about the two
shootings. Scheidt lied about her current address during the
interview, while also telling the police that she sold the guns
at a yard sale and did not know who was responsible for the
shootings. But the next day Scheidt changed course, called the
police, and admitted to providing false answers in the inter-
view. She then acknowledged that she purchased all five

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4 No. 23-2567
firearms using fictious addresses, only later to sell them to a
man she believed was affiliated with a Mexican drug cartel.
B
A federal grand jury later indicted Scheidt on five counts
of knowingly making a false written statement likely to de-
ceive a firearms dealer in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(6) and
one count of knowingly making a false statement to a govern-
ment agent in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a).
Scheidt moved to dismiss the five § 922(a)(6) counts, con-
tending that the statute criminalized conduct protected by the
Second Amendment. The district court denied the motion,
concluding that the conduct prohibited by § 922(a)(6) enjoys
no Second Amendment protection. The district court also em-
phasized that nothing about the Supreme Court’s decision in
Bruen alters that conclusion or, more generally, calls into
question the constitutionality of federal false statement or ob-
struction of justice statutes. Section 922(a)(6) does not impose
substantive restrictions on who may possess a firearm and in-
stead, the district court continued, only prohibits making false
statements, which is not Second Amendment protected con-
duct.
Scheidt pleaded guilty to all counts, and the district court
sentenced her to 18 months’ imprisonment. She now appeals.
II
Scheidt may pursue a constitutional challenge to
§ 922(a)(6) even though she pleaded guilty without reserving
the right to appeal. See Class v. United States, 583 U.S. 174, 183–
84 (2018) (acknowledging that Federal Rule of Criminal Pro-
cedure 11(a)(2) permits certain kinds of constitutional chal-
lenges following an unconditional guilty plea). In doing so,

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No. 23-2567 5
however, Scheidt may not challenge any factual admissions
she made in pleading guilty. See id. at 180. Nor may she press
statutory construction arguments that her conduct somehow
falls outside the scope of § 922(a)(6). See Grzegorczyk v. United
States, 997 F.3d 743, 748 (7th Cir. 2021) (emphasizing that un-
conditional guilty pleas waive issues of statutory construc-
tion). In short, Scheidt is limited to asserting, as she did in the
district court, that § 922(a)(6) violates the Second Amend-
ment.
By its terms, § 922(a)(6) prohibits making false statements
“in connection with the acquisition … of any firearm” from a
licensed dealer, “with respect to any fact material to the law-
fulness of the sale or other disposition of such firearm or am-
munition.” Nobody disputes that the statute covers and pro-
hibits Scheidt’s submission of false information on ATF Form
4473. Plain and simple, she violated § 922(a)(6), foremost
when she knowingly lied about her home address.
Scheidt urges us to see her appeal as raising a constitu-
tional issue—whether the Second Amendment framework
the Supreme Court adopted in Bruen applies to a false state-
ment statute like § 922(a)(6). Her argument goes like this:
Scheidt implores us to see her prosecution as covered by the
Second Amendment because Congress conditioned her right
to purchase a firearm on completing ATF Form 4473. Section
922(a)(6), she adds, further conditioned her right to possess a
firearm by demanding honesty. The district court committed
error, Scheidt tells us, when it failed to undertake the Bruen-
mandated historical analysis and thus to determine whether
our nation has a history and tradition of requiring the com-
pletion of registration forms prior to sale.

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6 No. 23-2567
We disagree and do not see this as a Second Amendment
case. Ordinary information-providing requirements, like
those imposed by ATF Form 4473 and enforced through crim-
inal statutes like § 922(a)(6), do not “infringe” the right to
keep and bear arms. Completing ATF Form 4473, and adher-
ing to its attendant truth-telling requirement, is conduct that
is outside the scope of the Second Amendment’s protections,
not requiring application of Bruen’s historical analysis frame-
work. Cf. Huddleston v. United States, 415 U.S. 814, 825 (1974)
(explaining that ATF Form 4473 is a “means of providing ad-
equate and truthful information about firearms transactions”
to assist the government’s detection of a firearm that is either
obtained for an illegal purpose or purchased by someone who
is ineligible to own a firearm). Only in the most indirect
way—and even then, too indirectly—does § 922(a)(6) impli-
cate the right to bear arms.
What’s more, Scheidt’s position on appeal runs headlong
into our recent decision in United States v. Holden, 70 F.4th
1015 (7th Cir. 2023). There we observed that “[t]he power to
collect accurate information is of a different character—and
stands on a firmer footing—than the power to prohibit partic-
ular people from owning guns.” Put another way, Scheidt
may not lie when completing Form 4473 and then turn around
and challenge her § 922(a)(6) conviction on the ground that
the information requirement itself is invalid. See United States
v. Knox, 396 U.S. 77, 79 (1969) (“[O]ne who furnishes false in-
formation to the Government in feigned compliance with a
statutory requirement cannot defend against prosecution for
his fraud by challenging the validity of the requirement it-
self.”); see also Holden, 70 F.4th at 1018 (“People cannot en-
gage in self help by telling lies to avoid the inquiry whether
§ 922(n) may properly apply to them; they must tell the truth

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No. 23-2567 7
and seek judicial relief on the ground that § 922(n) would be
invalid with respect to them, in particular.”). Scheidt faced a
federal prosecution for providing false information to the
government, full stop.
Scheidt urges us to see ATF Form 4473 as akin to a condi-
tion precedent that imposes an unconstitutional barrier to in-
dividual gun possession. We decline. Neither the Form nor
the requirement to complete it impose any sort of unconstitu-
tional condition under the Second Amendment. Rather, ATF
Form 4473 helps screen for purchasers who run afoul of reg-
ulations informing who may lawfully possess a firearm and
what kind of firearm that person may possess. The plain text
of the Second Amendment does not cover Scheidt’s conduct,
so there is no need to conduct a historical analysis of gun reg-
istration forms.
In the final analysis, our reasoning in Holden controls. Sec-
tion 922(a)(6) restricts fraudulent statements, not firearm pur-
chases. See 70 F.4th at 1017. Indeed, it is well understood that
“false statements may be punished even when the govern-
ment is not entitled to demand answers.” Id. (collecting cases).
We follow Holden’s direction and conclude that the Second
Amendment does not immunize purchasers from knowingly
providing misstatements in ATF Form 4473.
For these reasons, we AFFIRM.

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