Texas judge says guns can't be banned from post offices

[douglas9]

(CN) — The U.S. government cannot constitutionally keep people from carrying guns in and around post offices, a Texas federal judge ruled Tuesday, finding that such restrictions lack a historical basis.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor cited the U.S Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which set a new standard for Second Amendment cases whereby gun restrictions have to be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition” in order to be constitutional.

He found that although mail carriers and post offices have faced threats since the founding, the government only banned firearm possession on postal property a little over 50 years ago.

“Even after the government started housing post offices in federal buildings in the early 1900s, it waited until 1964 to prohibit guns in federal buildings and 1972 to specifically prohibits firearms on postal property,” O’Connor wrote. “In other words, even though Congress and the founders were aware of the ‘general societal problem’ of violence towards the postal service, the prohibition against firearms in post offices or on postal property did not appear until nearly 200 years after the founding.”

In 2024, two gun rights groups, the Firearms Policy Coalition and the Second Amendment Foundation, as well as two individuals, challenged a federal law prohibiting possessing a “firearm or other dangerous weapon” in a “federal facility” — defined as “a building or part thereof owned or leased by the federal government, where federal employees are regularly present for the purpose of performing their official duties.”

https://www.courthousenews.com/texas-judge-says-guns-cant-be-banned-from-post-offices/