Beginning in the mid-eighties (1980s), a series of disgruntled civil service employees working for the United States Postal Service took out their frustration by shooting up post offices. The term “going postal” was born and generally applied to anyone who completely lost it in the workplace or in regard to it.
Post offices were soft targets, another public place where the gun-grabbing gun-grabbers had grabbed guns—federal property. No guns allowed, except in the hands of those prepared to engage in criminal use. It’s just one of those things, like how many concealed carry types ignore it the way they ignore the gun-free zone signs on restaurants and so on.
You may risk getting tossed from private property, but going postal at post offices is about to get less attractive.
[Federal District Court Judge Reed] O’Connor wrote that the law “is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment with respect to Plaintiffs’ (and their members) possession and carrying of firearms inside of an ordinary United States Post Office or the surrounding Post Office property.” There’s nothing in the order limiting it to Texas and applies to all members of the Second Amendment Foundation and Firearms Policy Coalition. …
Judge O’Connor struck down both the federal statute (18 U.S.C. § 930(a)) and USPS regulation (39 C.F.R. § 232.1(l)) that prohibited firearm possession and carry at ordinary post offices — not those situated on military bases or within multi-use federal complexes.
Hey, wait, you say, that’s just a district court judge, and don’t we want them to act like they can’t issue nationwide injunctions or strike down this or that because they feel like it? That would be correct. We don’t. So, while I agree with the decision, it ought not apply outside the district over which the court rules until the US Supreme Court has had a say, and that may well be the case.
However, it’s promising, as a case defended by Biden’s DOJ, that Trump’s DOJ was not all that interested in pursuing.
O’Connor wrote that the law “is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment with respect to Plaintiffs’ (and their members) possession and carrying of firearms inside of an ordinary United States Post Office or the surrounding Post Office property.” There’s nothing in the order limiting it to Texas and applies to all members of the Second Amendment Foundation and Firearms Policy Coalition.
The complaint was originally filed in June 2024 and the named defendant was then-Attorney General Garland. “So if the government seeks to restrict firearms in a particular location as a ‘sensitive place,’ it must prove that its current restriction is sufficiently analogous to a ‘well-established and representative historical analogue,’” the complaint said.
This order in Texas comes at the heels of the Department of Justice dropping a bid for an appeal in a criminal matter involving carriage on U.S. Postal Service property. U.S. v. Ayala in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida involved defendant Ayala’s possession of a firearm on postal grounds. District Court Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle wrote that: “The United States fails to meet its burden of pointing to a historical tradition of firearms regulation justifying Ayala’s indictment under § 930(a).”
Absent a change to the law or a ruling from a higher court, however, I’d continue to be careful. At this point, it’s a question of whether a DA or AG has a burr in their prosecutorial bonnet, and lawfare can still bankrupt you even when there’s no there-there.
This is a big step in the proper direction, but not quite big enough, though I would gladly be wrong about that.
