Justice Department ends 108-year postal firearms ban

The Postal Service is reversing its ban on mailing concealable firearms after the Justice Department's legal office concluded the ban was unconstitutional. This means people can now ship handguns through the mail, subject to whatever new safety rules the Postal Service writes to replace the old absolute prohibition.

For 110 years, the Postal Service treated concealable firearms as unmailable — full stop. The Justice Department's legal office just told them that ban doesn't hold up constitutionally, which means the Postal Service has to write new rules that allow some firearms to be mailed while still managing the obvious risks of shipping weapons through a national logistics network. This is a structural reversal: the default was 'no,' and now the default becomes 'yes, unless we write a rule against it.' The Postal Service now has to figure out what those rules are — licensing requirements, packaging standards, tracking, insurance, liability — and those rules will determine whether this becomes a functional shipping channel or a theoretical permission that stays locked down in practice.