The Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) has filed a motion for summary judgment in its case pending before a U.S. District Court in Texas challenging the Post Office gun ban.
The lawsuit FPC v. Garland challenges federal gun control laws prohibiting firearm possession, storage and carry at United States Post Offices and related properties, including post office parking lots. The plaintiffs are two law-abiding citizens licensed to carry in Texas and two non-profit membership associations—FPC and the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF).
Brandon Combs, FPC president, said the lawsuit is one in a long line of challenges designed to restore Second Amendment rights.
“Your right to carry weapons for armed self-defense does not end at the Post Office,” Combs said in a release announcing the action. “We look forward to eliminating this immoral ban and further restoring the People’s right and ability to protect themselves in public.”
In its motion for summary judgment, plaintiffs argue that the post office gun ban fails both of the standards set by the Supreme Court in New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
“The Carry Ban, to the extent it bars the possession and carriage of firearms in post offices and on postal property, infringes their Second Amendment rights and must be declared unconstitutional and enjoined,” the motion argues. “Bruen reaffirms that any Second Amendment regulation is constitutional only if the government ‘demonstrate[s] that [it] is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.’ But there is no historical tradition supporting the ban on lawful firearm carriage in post offices and on postal property.”
Because of that, the brief further argues that the government cannot meet its burden of proving a historical precedent.
“The postal system dates to the Founding, but there is no tradition of banning firearms in Post Offices,” the brief states. “On the contrary, there is a historical tradition of protecting the mail through materially different means.”
In the end, the motion argues that enforcement of the ban should be stopped immediately.
“For all these reasons, this Court should grant Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and permanently enjoin enforcement of the Carry Ban to the extent it bars the possession and carrying of firearms in U.S. Post Offices and on Postal Service postal property,” the brief concludes.
Federal gun law bans carrying firearms on much of its property, even in bathrooms and visitor centers on national lands, where a firearm might otherwise be permitted. Post offices, their parking lots—even the grounds around them—have all been designated gun-free zones where being caught in possession of a firearm, even locked in your vehicle as you walked inside, could result in fines and imprisonment.
In a similar case earlier this year, a federal judge in Florida ruled that the federal law banning people from possessing guns in post offices or while on post office property is unconstitutional, citing the landmark Bruen case in which the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the Second Amendment right to bear arms as an individual right and removed a host of obstacles many states had constructed to infringe upon those rights.
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