Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. – Three states say they will stand up for gun-control laws that the Trump administration will no longer defend and fight the shipment of firearms through the mail.
The attorneys general of New York, New Jersey and Delaware want to intervene in a Pennsylvania federal court case that challenges the prohibition of mailing guns through the U.S. Postal Service. The AGs said in a Monday brief that their involvement is needed because the federal government will no longer defend the law.
Allowing citizens to transport firearms through the mail would impair states from enforcing their own safety laws, they say.
“Those interests are no longer represented by the Federal Defendants, which no longer offers any defense of this critical public safety law on the merits, based on their unprecedented determination that this longstanding federal statute is unconstitutional, at least in certain applications,” their motion says.
Bonita Shreve and Gun Owners of America sued the U.S. Postal Service July 14 in Johnstown. 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 is challenged in her lawsuit.
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.
Earlier this year, the Department of Justice declared the law unconstitutional and recommended it no longer be enforced. It said because only certain FFL companies ship guns, “unlicensed private citizens face a complete ban on shipping concealable firearms, even though handguns are among the core ‘arms’ protected by the Second Amendment.”
That viewpoint is disputed, but the result is that in Shreve’s lawsuit, the named defendant – the U.S. Postal Service – isn’t mounting a defense of the merits of the law.
AGs Jennifer Davenport of New Jersey, Kathy Jennings of Delaware and Letitia James of New York hope to take up that cause. They’re asking Judge Stephanie Lou Haines, a Trump-appointee during his first term who served in the military, to let them intervene.
“(T)here is not merely the risk that the federal defendants would decline to appeal an adverse decision – instead, the federal defendants are declining to defend the statute on the merits even in this Court,” they say.
“Moreover, far from a fear of future policy changes, the federal government’s shift is concrete, and their already-filed summary judgment brief relies solely on procedural arguments, with no substantive defense.”
That motion by the feds says Shreve can’t challenge the law because if she ships her dad’s present through the U.S. Postal Service, she will not face criminal charges.
