The United States Postal Service has finally reversed a long-held position that barred firearms in post offices, even if held by individuals who were carrying legally just seconds before. It was a dumb rule, and though there was a history of post office shootings — enough that we started talking about people "going postal" — those were often employees anyway.
Now, though, the rule is gone, along with a couple of other rules about guns at the USPS.
Former Trump official William Perry argues that it's been a long time coming.
OLC’s opinion comes as welcome but untimely news to Tad Bonidy who lived in the middle of nowhere but within driving distance of Avon, Colorado, on the state’s rural western slope.
In 2010, after the Court’s landmark rulings in Heller and McDonald, Bonidy asked the USPS if he would be prosecuted if he carried his firearm into the Avon Post Office or locked it in his vehicle in the parking lot.
“Yes,” replied USPS’s top lawyer. Bonidy sued in Colorado federal district court.
In 2013, the federal district court held that Heller assured Bonidy’s constitutional right to carry firearms openly outside his home for self-defense, that although the post office itself was a “sensitive place” and the USPS’s regulation was presumptively valid there, the USPS could not constitutionally bar an armed Bonidy from parking on its property.
Unfortunately, two years later, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit (2-1) reversed the district court’s ruling.
Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich filed a powerful dissent, but it was insufficient to draw support from the third judge on the panel, a new appointee from Wyoming, or to persuade the Supreme Court to grant review of the ruling.
Too bad.
Rural westerners would have enjoyed not having to park across or down the street from their post offices and disarming before walking to and conducting business there.
Yes, this is something that should have happened a long time ago, but are we really surprised that it didn't?
Prior to this Trump administration, the White House had traditionally stuck to maintaining the status quo on guns, and that includes the first Trump administration. While I like much of what I've seen this go-around, the reality is that he was more than ready to sign legislation that wouldn't have just banned bump stocks, but could have destroyed the entire aftermarket trigger industry. He was more than willing to back legislation that sounded suspiciously like red flag laws, too.
Then that did him zero good come 2020. He'd taken some anti-gun positions and a lot of us weren't that enthralled with him. I still voted for him because he was light-years better than Biden, even on guns.
Now, though, he's making real pro-gun moves, even if it's while he's also defending some of those regulations in court. Then again, with the DOJ not filing appeals, well...maybe that's part of the game.
I honestly don't know.
What I do know is that Perry is right that it should have happened back then. It didn't. It wasn't going to because of the powers that be at the time. Neither Bush was particularly pro-gun. For all his virtues, Reagan signed gun control laws into existence, too.
This Trump administration is the only one that has seemed remotely interested in not just preserving the status quo, but restoring our gun rights in some manner. It took until now to get the most pro-gun administration in history, warts and all.
It's sad that you can legitimately hold that title while defending so many gun laws, but it's true.
And the fact that they're not appealing the last couple of losses, at least yet, is just glorious in and of itself, but it's not really enough.
Still, the USPS ruling is important if for no other reason than I don't have to disarm in the midst of running a quick errand, nor do I have to park 25 miles away and hike in to mail a package, all while vulnerable to the predators amongst us between point A and point B.
I've always taken the "better to be tried by 12 than carried by six" rule in such situations myself, but now we don't have to.
