When it comes to the topic of firearms and “public safety,” it’s not unusual for anti-gun groups to promote wildly inaccurate rhetoric. However, the fabrications and outright false statements delivered by the New Jersey governor and the New Jersey attorney general in response to the end of the ban on mailing firearms through the United States Postal Service were shocking.
On Monday, May 4, both the office of the governor and the office of the attorney general issued statements following the release of a joint letter from 21 states, plus the District of Columbia. The joint letter came mostly from liberal states and objected to Proposed Amendments to Publication 52, a rule addressing the outcome of Shreve v. United States Postal Service, a case challenging the ban on mailing of concealable arms.
On December 18, 2025, a U.S. district judge enjoined the enforcement of the nearly 100-year-old ban, and even the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel conceded that the ban was unconstitutional and “substantially burdens the right to bear arms protected by the Second Amendment.”
In an email, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport makes numerous allegations that the change to the rule will undermine public safety, likely relying on the ignorance of the public at large, intending the message as a scare tactic. Luckily for the informed reader, these statements are easily proven to not be factual.
False Statements by the New Jersey Attorney General
- Allowing individuals to send firearms through the mail without going through a licensed seller will make it easier for prohibited persons like felons and domestic abusers to access firearms, including illegal firearms.
- It will also make it more difficult, and more expensive, for states to solve gun crimes, reducing the effectiveness of law enforcement tracing tools.
- Turning the Postal Service into a tool to ship guns into our states, in violation of our laws, will make it more difficult to keep guns out of the hands of felons and other dangerous people.
- Individuals prohibited in New Jersey from owning a firearm – including convicted felons, domestic abusers, and individuals subject to restraining orders – could get a gun through the mail, despite those states’ careful laws on who may possess guns.
- And the types of guns that might be mailed across state lines may even include those prohibited by states’ laws, such as assault weapons or silencers.
- In other words, people who are barred by New Jersey law from purchasing weapons would gain a new way to acquire them via the mail, without undergoing a background check. And they could also obtain weapons that are otherwise illegal to possess.
Federal and State Laws Remain Unchanged
The reality of the matter is the outcome of the court case and the proposed change to the rule do not change any law regulating the purchase of firearms or how federally licensed firearms retailers perform interstate firearms transfers. This is corroborated by the fact that nowhere in the joint letter is there any assertion that the Proposed Rule creates any change in the underlying law governing firearms purchases or possession. It simply allows an individual already in legal possession of a concealable arm to mail himself said firearm across state lines.
Every interstate sales transaction still requires a background check through the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), and must be shipped from one FFL directly to another before being transferred to the end buyer (with yet another point-of-sale background check in the case of New Jersey).
Nor do proposed changes to the rule on shipping change the law about which firearms or accessories are legal in a given state. Ironically, thousands of firearms are shipped around the country daily through other private carriers like UPS and FedEx. The proposed rule simply states that the U.S. Post Office cannot ban the mailing of concealable arms, bringing it into alignment with other carriers.
An analogous argument to the state’s objection would be that because you can drive across state lines with firearms, it undermines all laws on purchases and possession.
AG Threatens New Tracking Database
Davenport also threatened that, “…state law enforcement will have to create a new tracking structure to account for the unregulated mailing of concealable firearms through USPS, harming state budgets that are already damaged by the devastating economic impacts of the second Trump Administration.”
As the state has no jurisdiction over the United States Post Office or private mail, it’s unclear how the state would impose such a “tracking structure.”
