{"id":118075,"date":"2026-07-29T17:32:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T22:32:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=118075"},"modified":"2026-07-29T17:32:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T22:32:26","slug":"118075","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=118075","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Another Win: DOJ Pulls Its Appeal of a Ruling that Carry Bans In Post Offices are Unconstitutional.<\/a><\/p>\n

Another significant victory has emerged in the ongoing effort to roll back unconstitutional restrictions on the right to bear arms in places that millions of law-abiding Americans visit every day in every state in towns across the nation. This time, the challenge centers on one of the most familiar public institutions across the country: local post offices.<\/p>\n

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice voluntarily\u00a0withdrew its appeal<\/a>\u00a0of a federal court decision that enjoined enforcement of the federal ban on carrying firearms at U.S. Post Office facilities. This withdrawal is yet another meaningful shift in the Trump administration\u2019s approach to defending the Second Amendment by\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0defending firearm regulations that lack historical support as required by the U.S. Supreme Court decision in\u00a0New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For decades, federal law and Postal Service\u00a0regulations<\/a>\u00a0have broadly prohibited law-abiding citizens from possessing firearms on postal property. Unlike courthouses or other secure government facilities, neighborhood post offices are buildings that millions of Americans visit daily to conduct routine business as they go about their day.<\/p>\n

Yet federal regulations treated every post office as a categorical \u201cgun-free\u201d zone regardless of whether an individual possessed a state issued concealed carry permit or otherwise posed any type of threat to public safety. Of course, local post offices are not \u201cgun free zones\u201d in any meaningful way, as they do not screen for unauthorized weapons and count on criminals to follow the same \u201chonor system\u201d as law-abiding citizens.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

NRA has been on the frontlines of this effort for years, including by filing an amicus curiae\u00a0brief in the 11th<\/sup>\u00a0Circuit Court of Appeals<\/a>\u00a0in 2024. Then, earlier this year, NRA, along with Gun Owners of America, jointly\u00a0filed suit<\/a>\u00a0in federal court. NRA\u2019s lawsuit argued that the ban violates the Second Amendment under the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s text and history framework as established by\u00a0Bruen<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That case held that the right to bear arms includes the right to carry handguns publicly for self-defense and that modern firearm restrictions must be consistent with the nation\u2019s historical tradition of firearm regulation.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s well known by now that\u00a0Bruen\u00a0<\/em>fundamentally realigned the Second Amendment analytical framework that lower courts, in disregard of earlier cases like\u00a0District of Columbia v. Heller<\/em>, were using. Thus, the government can no longer justify modern restrictions based solely on generalized public safety arguments or judicial interest balancing tests. Instead, the government bears the burden of demonstrating that a challenged regulation is supported by well-established historical restrictions that existed at the time of the Second Amendment\u2019s adoption.<\/p>\n

Applying that framework in the previous court case, the\u00a0District Court concluded<\/a>\u00a0that the government failed to establish a historical tradition that supported a broad prohibition on carrying firearms at ordinary post offices. The court rejected the notion that simply labeling government property as a \u201csensitive place\u201d is sufficient to extinguish the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens.<\/p>\n

The DOJ\u2019s decision to abandon its appeal is particularly significant and timely when viewed alongside the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s most recent decision in\u00a0Wolford v. Lopez<\/em><\/a>. The\u00a0Wolford<\/em><\/a>\u00a0decision helped reinforce the principle that government can\u2019t broadly declare ordinary places off-limits to law-abiding firearm owners without a well-established historical analogue.<\/p>\n

While the DOJ\u2019s dismissal consisted of just two short two sentences with no further explanation, those few words speak volumes in reflecting a broader trend within President Trump\u2019s DOJ. In the past year alone, the Department has reconsidered several federal firearm restrictions previously defended by prior administrations. Rather than automatically defend every existing firearm regulation, the Trump DOJ has shown a greater willingness to reevaluate whether longstanding restrictions can actually survive constitutional scrutiny under\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u2019s test.<\/p>\n

Although the DOJ dismissal doesn\u2019t invalidate the regulation nationwide or create binding appellate precedent, it does represent an important acknowledgment that the restriction was unenforceable. While the federal prohibition technically remains on the books, the DOJ\u2019s decision to abandon its appeal is a victory in the long game as it leaves intact a federal court ruling that recognizes that the government failed to justify treating ordinary post offices as places where the Second Amendment simply ceases to exist.<\/p>\n

For NRA and Second Amendment advocates, this is an important victory that reaches beyond post offices. It reinforces the fundamental principle that government restrictions on the right to bear arms aren\u2019t entitled to the presumption of constitutionality simply because they have existed for decades. Decisions like this also underscore why\u00a0NRA\u2019s strategic and sustained Second Amendment litigation<\/a>\u00a0remains essential.<\/p>\n

For future litigation,\u00a0Bruen<\/em>,\u00a0Wolford,<\/em>\u00a0and DOJ\u2019s withdrawal collectively strengthen challenges to expansive \u201csensitive places\u201d and \u201cgun free zone\u201d laws enacted by states and the federal government. The list of places where government officials claim Second Amendment rights don\u2019t apply continues to shrink, and this latest milestone to dismantle unconstitutional restrictions continues the momentum. Restrictions covering places such as parks, public transit, recreational facilities, or similar government office buildings will increasingly be measured against the same constitutional yardstick. And that yardstick now measures by history and not modern policy preferences that support disarming law-abiding citizens in locations they visit daily.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another Win: DOJ Pulls Its Appeal of a Ruling that Carry Bans In Post Offices are Unconstitutional. Another significant victory has emerged in the ongoing effort to roll back unconstitutional restrictions on the right to bear arms in places that millions of law-abiding Americans visit every day in every state in towns across the nation. … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=118075"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118076,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118075\/revisions\/118076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=118075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=118075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=118075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}