A lot of people don't really think about carrying a gun into a post office. It's just a quick errand for most of us. We drop off or pick up, then head back out. Up until recently, it was a violation of federal gun laws if you did so.
Yet the U.S. Post Office is trying to ignore the judicial loss it took and is still trying to enforce overturned rules. Plus, the DOJ is trying to claim that it needs member lists from organizations to know just who is covered in the injunction, and that the injunction should just be for Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) members and the named plaintiffs.
This irks gun rights groups like SAF, so it's pushing back against this idiocy.
From a press release:
The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and its partners have filed a brief in response to the government’s efforts to limit the scope of the injunction SAF obtained on behalf of its members in its U.S. Post Office carry ban challenge.
In September, the Northern District of Texas ruled in favor of SAF and declared the carry ban on post office property unconstitutional, enjoining its enforcement against the plaintiffs, including SAF members. In response to the ruling, the government filed a motion to limit the scope of the injunction to only the named individual plaintiffs and to members of SAF and its partner organizations, but only to those who were members when the complaint was originally filed and who have been identified and verified.
“The critical thing to remember here is that the government is fighting tooth and nail to continue enforcing an unconstitutional law against as many people as possible,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “The DOJ’s position that it would be ‘impossible’ for it to know who was protected by the injunction without a membership list is just plain silly. If officials want to know if someone found to be carrying at a post office is a SAF member they can simply ask.”
As noted in the brief, “…if the Government believes that merely asking whether an individual is covered by the injunction is somehow “enforcing” the Post Office Ban, there is no amount of information about Plaintiffs or their members that Plaintiffs could give the Government that would render compliance possible.”
Originally filed in June 2024, the lawsuit challenges the ban on carrying firearms in U.S. Post Offices and on postal property. SAF is joined in the case, FPC v. Bondi, by the Firearms Policy Coalition and two private citizens.
“When we file a case, we do so on behalf of all SAF members,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The carry ban on U.S. Post Office property affects countless peaceable citizens nationwide who visit post offices every day to conduct their business. A Federal District Judge has declared the law unconstitutional, and yet the government’s knee-jerk reaction is to continue enforcing it against as many Americans as possible. Decades of settled case law says that it’s wrong.”
If it's an injunction because it's likely the law is unconstitutional, limiting it only to the members of an organization is beyond ridiculous. Everyone has the same rights, and to say that they don't get them because they joined group A instead of group B is beyond stupid.
Plus, post offices should never have been gun-free zones. Sure, I remember the post office shootings from back in the day, but those were employees who "went postal," as we started to frame it, and so they'd still be barred from carrying, no matter what the ruling said. After all, it's common for government agencies to prohibit staff from carrying.
While this is far from over, the fact that the USPS and DOJ are trying to dodge having to adhere to the injunction is troubling. While the Trump administration's DOJ is the most pro-gun DOJ in my lifetime, this is proof that such a statement wasn't a particularly high bar to clear.
