U.S. Postal Service
PITTSBURGH - A Pennsylvania woman wants to send her father a very special gift in the mail - a gun - and has gone to court to challenge the law preventing her from doing so.
Bonita Shreve and Gun Owners of America sued the U.S. Postal Service July 14 in Pittsburgh federal court. Shreve, of Blair County, has no intention of making the three-hour drive to her father in Eastern Pennsylvania to deliver a handgun.
Since she does not hold a Federal Firearms License, Shreve can't send the gun through a private service like UPS, leaving the Post Office as her last option. But a 1927 law says she can't, so nearly 100 years later its constitutionality its challenged in her lawsuit.
"(T)his vestigial regulation has outlived its Prohibition-era roots, having been enacted during a time with no other federal controls on the interstate sale or shipment of firearms on the books," the lawsuit says.
"And more importantly, it fails to comport with the original public understanding of the Second Amendment, which accommodated no federal controls on the domestic mailing of firearms at the time of the Founding."
There are exceptions to the law for members of the military but Shreve and her father don't qualify. Co-plaintiff Gun Owners of America says it has more than 2 million members and supporters, some of whom would also wish to use the Post Office to ship guns.
The law has outlived its usefulness, the lawsuit says, considering it was passed during a perceived crime wave during Prohibition. Handguns bought through the mail were a favorite of criminals, and the suit notes 5,000 guns being mailed to residents of Detroit in 1924.
Opponents of the law then said criminals would just find other means to find firearms and that Second Amendment protections shouldn't be stripped because of the crime rate.
The suit cites U.S. Supreme Court rulings preserving the Second Amendment and says the mail ban is no longer needed, considering other laws targeting interstate shipment of illegal guns are in place.
"Yet today, ordinary Americans still are effectively barred from shipping their handguns for private, noncommercial, lawful purposes, even though the U.S. Mail remains available for the shipment of long guns," the suit says.
"Indeed, ordinary Americans have no other option available to ship handguns, as private common carriers have prohibited the practice for several years."
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Sheri Biggs, R-S.C., has introduced the latest version of the Protecting the Mailing of Firearms Act, though it still sits in two House committees.
Gilbert Ambler of Ambler Law Offices in Carlisle and Stephen Stamboulieh of Mississippi represent the plaintiffs.
