Attorneys representing the Second Amendment Foundation and its partners in a federal lawsuit challenging the general ban on firearms carry in post office facilities have filed a plaintiffs’ brief supporting their motion for summary judgment in the case.
The brief was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division.
SAF is joined by the Firearms Policy Coalition and two private citizens, Gavin Pate and George Mandry, who are members of both organizations. They are represented by attorneys R. Brent Cooper and S. Hunter Walton at Cooper & Scully, P.C. in Dallas, and David H. Thompson, Peter A. Patterson and Megan M. Wold at Cooper & Kirk in Washington, D.C. The case is known as FPC v. Garland.
In their 22-page brief, SAF and its partners argue, “The Founders did not bar carriage of firearms in Post Offices. Instead, they regulated the improper, threatening, and violent use of weapons in Post Offices. Later generations confirmed this historical tradition by protecting mail carriers with bounties and facilitating carriage, not banning firearms. Post Offices have been a feature of our country from before we were a country, and concerns about threats to Post Offices are as old as Post Offices themselves…Yet, to Plaintiffs’ knowledge, Congress passed no restrictions on the carriage of firearms in U.S. Post Offices during the Founding era, suggesting that the Carry Ban is unconstitutional.”
“Post offices are public buildings, open to the people, and should not be considered ‘sensitive’ places barring law-abiding citizens from peaceably carrying arms for personal protection,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “As we note in our brief, our proposed course of conduct — licensed carry on postal property — falls within the Second Amendment’s plain text.”
“This case has far-reaching implications which would apply across the country,” added SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “Millions of honest citizens visit post offices every day to conduct all kinds of legitimate business, and they should not be required to park their Second Amendment rights at the curb before stepping onto post office property, or into a post office building.”
The Second Amendment Foundation (saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group dedicated to safeguarding and promoting the fundamental rights of individuals enshrined in the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. SAF engages in aggressive legal action to ensure the principles of armed self-defense, personal liberty, and the ownership of arms are defended, secured, and restored. Through public education initiatives, SAF teaches the importance of the Second Amendment to promote a society that values and exercises the right to keep and bear arms.
