USPS Handgun Mailing Ban Is Unconstitutional

We reported last summer how the pro-gun group Gun Owners of America (GOA) had filed a lawsuit challenging the nearly-century-old law that deems it illegal to ship handguns via the United States Postal Service (USPS).

At the time, GOA argued in the case Shreve v. United States Postal Service that the ban was “inconsistent with Founding-era historical tradition” of firearm regulation, thereby failing to fulfill the Second requirement set down in the 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

“These prohibitions plainly violate the Second Amendment, and this case is easily resolvable under Bruen,” the complaint stated. “Indeed, the U.S. Postal Service traces its lineage to 1775, and it has existed through the Founding era and beyond. But at no point did the Founders ever criminalize the mailing of handguns as the challenged statute does now. Nor did the Reconstruction generation criminalize such conduct, which only confirms this Founding-era understanding. 

On January 15, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel released an important opinion that the federal statute prohibiting the mailing of concealable firearms such as pistols, revolvers and other handguns is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment as applied to Second Amendment-protected arms. 

In its memorandum opinion for the Attorney General, the OLC concluded that the U.S. Department of Justice may not enforce the statute against law-abiding citizens seeking to ship or receive handguns used for lawful purposes, including self-defense, target shooting and hunting. The opinion directs the Postal Service to modify its regulations accordingly, and it recommends that the statute not be criminally enforced. 

“This is a major victory for Second Amendment rights,” GOA said in a news release announcing the opinion. “The opinion applied a historical analysis under the Supreme Court’s landmark decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller, McDonald v. Chicago, and especially New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, finding no relevant historical tradition justifying a ban on shipping protected arms. OLC also concluded that the statute was designed to serve an illegitimate purpose: suppressing traffic in constitutionally protected firearms.”

 Erich Pratt, GOA senior vice president, said the opinion was an important one for America’s lawful gun owners.

“This opinion is a direct rebuke to decades of federal overreach that has unlawfully restricted Americans’ ability to acquire, maintain and transport their firearms,” Pratt said. “For too long, law-abiding gun owners have been forced to navigate expensive, burdensome workarounds involving federal firearms licensees, just to ship a handgun—even for perfectly lawful purposes.

The DOJ now recognizes what we’ve always known: The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms, and that includes the rights to acquire and transport them.” 

Speaking for the Gun Owners Foundation, GOF Executive Vice President John Velleco was also encouraged by the new DOJ opinion.

“When the government enforces a prohibition on guns and gun owners with no historical foundation and no constitutional support—like the USPS ban on mailing handguns at issue in our case—it is acting outside the law,” Velleco said. “This historic move by the Department of Justice acknowledges that the Second Amendment protects the real, practical exercise of a fundamental right to acquire and transport a firearm. Neither Congress nor federal agencies are allowed to rewrite the Constitution to suit their anti-Second Amendment preferences.”