The National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, and Gun Owners Foundation filed a federal lawsuit on May 26 challenging the blanket prohibition on carrying lawfully owned firearms inside United States Post Offices. The case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, is captioned Hornbake v. Blanche and names three individual NRA members — each a licensed carry holder — as plaintiffs alongside the organizations. NRA-ILA announced the filing and framed it as part of the organization's continuing effort to strike down regulations that burden lawful carriers without any grounding in historical law.

The 18 U.S.C. § 930(a) prohibition that bans firearms from federal facilities has been on the books since 1972. The United States Postal Service separately codifies the restriction in its own regulations. The NRA-led complaint argues both prohibitions violate the Second Amendment under the text-and-history standard the Supreme Court established in NYSRPA v. Bruen: for a firearm restriction to pass constitutional muster, the government must demonstrate an analogous restriction rooted in the nation's founding-era historical tradition. The plaintiffs argue the government cannot meet that standard because the U.S. Post Office has existed since 1775 and no prohibition on carrying firearms at postal facilities appeared until nearly two centuries later.

The United States itself has acknowledged in prior litigation that it can point to "no evidence of firearms being prohibited at post offices at the time of the founding." That concession is central to the complaint's historical argument. Early-nineteenth-century records confirm that firearms carry at postal facilities was routine, not restricted. The Philadelphia-area district court will now determine whether the government can rehabilitate the 1972 prohibition by pointing to analogous sensitive-place restrictions from the founding era — an argument it has struggled to sustain in courts across the country in the years since Bruen.

Federal district courts in Texas and Florida have already found the post office carry restriction unconstitutional on Second Amendment grounds, though those decisions are limited to their respective jurisdictions and named plaintiffs. Filing in the Western District of Pennsylvania places the challenge squarely in the Third Circuit, which covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. A favorable ruling at the district level would add precedent in a circuit that has largely trended toward upholding restrictions in the post-Bruen era, raising the stakes for an appellate decision.

NRA-ILA Executive Director John Commerford said the organization is committed to ending restrictions that force law-abiding permit holders to disarm before stepping inside a federal building to mail a package. Gun Owners of America has been active on related postal litigation, including challenges to the long-standing federal ban on mailing handguns that the current DOJ has also been reassessing. Bearing Arms reported the filing alongside a separate new suit challenging the Maryland Glock ban, marking one of the more active weeks for Second Amendment filings in 2026.

A ruling in Hornbake v. Blanche is not expected before late 2026 at the earliest, given typical civil rights case timelines in the federal district courts. If the district court finds the prohibition unconstitutional, the government will face a decision on whether to appeal into the Third Circuit — setting up the prospect of a circuit split and increasing the likelihood that the Supreme Court would eventually be asked to weigh in on a federal restriction it has so far declined to take up directly.