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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.” Read more

Washington, D.C. – Last week, Gun Owners of America (GOA) and Gun Owners Foundation (GOF) joined the Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition, Palmetto State Armory, B&T USA, and the States of West Virginia, Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Montana, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Utah in filing an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in defense of former Iowa Police Chief Bradley Wendt. Chief Wendt, who previously ran the Adair Police Department, was targeted by the Biden-Harris DOJ for acquiring machine guns for his police department, which is expressly permitted under federal law.

Although federal law clearly allows local governments to acquire, possess, and use machineguns within their complete discretion, the ATF and DOJ have recently begun a malicious prosecution scheme aimed to crack down on the ability of local government officials to acquire machineguns. Tellingly, DOJ’s prosecutions have been brought against small town police chiefs and rural sheriffs – generally the very same officials who stand up for their constituents against the efforts of radical gun grabbers.

In July, Chief Wendt was sentenced to 60 months in federal prison for making false statements and fraud in connection with acquiring machine guns for his department, and his case is now on appeal to the Eighth Circuit.

In our brief, the coalition argues that federal law expressly prohibits the federal government from interfering in a local police department’s authority to acquire, possess, and issue machine guns to officers. Additionally, our brief argues that the alleged false statements made by Chief Wendt could not be considered by ATF under their own regulation, meaning they were not material and should never have been presented to the jury. Read more