Like many other unconstitutional laws impacting Second Amendment rights, the law prohibiting the mailing of handguns through the postal service originated nearly a century ago, and is now being challenged in court by the Gun Owners Foundation.
On July 14, Plaintiffs Bonita Shreve, Gun Owners of America, Inc., and Gun Owners Foundation filed suit against the United States Post Office to challenge the 1927, Prohibition-era firearm regulation, “that prohibits ordinary Americans from mailing handguns using the U.S. Postal Service, even for perfectly lawful purposes.”
The case was filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
In the 25-page complaint, GOA/GOF frame their argument:
…this vestigial regulation has outlived its Prohibition-era roots, having been enacted during a time with no other federal controls on the interstate sale or shipment of firearms on the books. And more importantly, it fails to comport with the original public understanding of the Second Amendment, which accommodated no federal controls on the domestic mailing of firearms at the time of the Founding.
If it’s not immediately evident why this infringement is a problem for gun owners, readers should be reminded that currently only FFLs can transfer firearms through common carriers like UPS or FedEx. If a citizen wanted to mail their own firearm to one of their homes or places of business, or do a legal, private firearms transfer, they are out of luck when it comes to USPS, unless they utilize an FFL, which generally levies expensive transfer fees. The USPS prohibition in Publication 52 further limits what should be a law-abiding activity.
The complaint notes that the 1927 enactment was during a period of a perceived wave of organized crime and did little to deter crime. There is also, quite obviously, no founding era prohibition on the carriage of firearms through what was then equivalent to our modern postal service, as would be required under the Bruen test.
We will continue to follow this story.
