A federal lawsuit challenging the ban on firearms carry in U.S. Post Office facilities has been filed by the Second Amendment Foundation in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division.

This action brings the number of current cases involving SAF to almost 60, reinforcing the organization’s growing reputation as a legal powerhouse responsible for a large number of federal and state lawsuits challenging gun restrictions across the country. These lawsuits were made possible largely thanks to a SAF Supreme Court victory in McDonald v. City of Chicago in June 2010, which incorporated the Second Amendment to the states via the 14^th Amendment.

Joining SAF in this new action are two private citizens, Gavin Pate of Arlington, Texas and George Mandry of New Braunfels. Both are licensed to carry in the Lone Star State. Also joining in the lawsuit is the Nevada-based Firearms Policy Coalition, which has partnered on several previous and current SAF cases. Plaintiffs are represented by attorneys R. Brent Cooper and S. Hunter Walton at Cooper & Scully, P.C. in Dallas, and David H. Thompson and Peter A. Patterson at Cooper & Kirk in Washington, D.C.

Named as the sole defendant is Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The 8-page federal complaint alleges that 18 U.S.C. § 930(a) and 39 C.F.R. § 232.1(l) violate the Second Amendment by prohibiting the carry of firearms in a public place—in this case a Post Office—which allegedly runs afoul of guidelines set down in the June 2022 Supreme Court decision of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

As explained in the complaint, “Bruen has already established that the Second Amendment covers plaintiffs’ proposed conduct here—carrying arms publicly for self-defense and other lawful purposes…As such, the Second Amendment ‘presumptively protects’ Plaintiffs’ right to carry firearms in United States Post Offices and associated property, such as parking lots.

“It is thus the government’s burden to ‘affirmatively prove that its firearms regulation is part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms’,” the complaint adds. “The government cannot do so.”

“These laws are unconstitutional under the Second Amendment,” the complaint says, “because they ban the carry of firearms within United States Post Offices and on associated property, such as Post Office parking lots.”

SAF and its partners are asking for a declaratory judgment that the laws prohibiting carry in post offices are unconstitutional, and they want the court to issue preliminary and permanent injunctions to prevent the government from enforcing the ban.

Among the factors making this lawsuit so important right now is that 29 states have adopted so-called “constitutional carry” laws which enable private citizens to carry sidearms for personal protection without a license or permit. Texas is one of those states, having enacted its law in 2021. The current list of permitless carry states is found at Handgunlaw.us.

The lawsuit contends that the high court in Bruen “struck down New York’s ‘proper cause’ requirement for issuing a permit to carry a handgun in public. In doing so, it expressly rejected New York’s attempt to justify its restriction as analogous to a historical ‘sensitive place’ regulation. The Court explained that governments may not simply ban guns wherever people may ‘congregate’ or assemble.’”

Both SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb and Executive Director Adam Kraut explained in a prepared statement announcing the lawsuit that the daily routines of millions of legally-armed private citizens often include stops at their local post office, whether that facility is in a major urban area or in some part of the rural U.S. There is no historical evidence from the founding era that the carrying of arms—which was common practice in the early United States—was prohibited in a post office. Often, the “post office” was a section in a dry goods store or other place where local residents would come and go for various purposes, and pick up their mail in the process.

According to the latest estimate from the Montana-based Crime Prevention Research Center, there may be as many as 21.8 million active carry licenses in the U.S. today. Because of permitless carry in a majority of states, the actual number of legally-armed citizens could be much higher. The Center notes in its report that “six states now have over 1 million permit holders: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Florida is the top states with 2.56 million permits.”

Back in January, a federal judge in Florida ruled the guns-in-post-offices prohibition was unconstitutional. As reported at the time by Reuters, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, a Donald Trump appointee, ruled in a case involving a postal employee that, “a blanket restriction on firearms possession in post offices is incongruent with the American tradition of firearms regulation.” It is not clear whether that ruling will have any bearing on the SAF lawsuit.

About Dave Workman

Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.