The USPS handgun mail ban has been legally dead for decades — we just didn't have a ruling saying so until now. DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel finally put it in writing, and the reasoning is worth understanding.

"For too long, law-abiding gun owners have been forced to navigate expensive, burdensome workarounds involving federal firearms licensees, just to ship a handgun—even for perfectly lawful purposes."

Anyone who's had to ship a pistol back for warranty work knows exactly what this looks like — finding an FFL willing to receive it, coordinating schedules, paying transfer fees on both ends, and waiting. For a gun you already own. That system existed because the law said it had to, and now DOJ is saying the law couldn't constitutionally say that.

"OLC applied the Bruen historical tradition test and found nothing. No founding-era analog."

This is Bruen working as advertised. The government had to show a historical tradition supporting this ban, went looking, and came back empty. That's a meaningful data point for every other restriction that's never been held up to that same light.

The catch — and it's a real one — is that OLC opinions aren't court rulings. USPS hasn't rewritten its regulations. UPS and FedEx have their own rules that this doesn't touch. Don't ship anything differently yet. Watch for the actual regulatory change before you treat this as settled.

Has anyone here dealt with the FFL shipping workaround recently — warranty return, gunsmith out of state, anything like that? Curious what the actual cost and hassle looked like on your end.

Read the full article in The Handbook → | By Steve Duskett