Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

Postal Service Poised To Allow People To Mail Handguns After DOJ Memo

(Screen Capture/PBS NewsHour)

The United States Postal Service (USPS) closed comments Monday on a proposed rule that would allow law-abiding citizens to mail firearms, reversing a 99-year-old ban.

The Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a memo in April questioning the ban, citing the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, prompting the USPS to prepare new regulations, The Associated Press reported. The ban, imposed by Congress in 1927, covers “concealable” firearms.

“We conclude that the restriction imposed by section 1715 violates the Second Amendment. Section 1715 makes it difficult to travel with arms for lawful purposes, including self-defense, target shooting, and hunting,” the memo says.

“The statute also imposes significant barriers to shipping constitutionally protected firearms as articles of commerce, which interferes with citizens’ incidental rights to acquire and maintain arms. Indeed, the statute ultimately aims to suppress traffic in constitutionally protected articles thus rendering the law per se unconstitutional as to those articles, and we are aware of no historical analogues that would satisfy the government’s burden of showing that this unprecedented restriction ‘is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,’” the memo continues.

The USPS is now considering whether to publish the final rule after Democratic elected officials and anti-Second Amendment organizations have pushed back. The Justice Department referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to the memo when reached for comment.