CO:PENDLEY: A Second Amendment victory in Colorado

In July, a Colorado federal district court struck down a U.S. Postal Service regulation barring a rural man from possessing a firearm in his car when he parks in the post office parking lot to retrieve and send his mail. The news made headlines across the country as one of the first favorable federal court rulings after President Obama declared war on the Second Amendment in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shootings tragedy.

Tab Bonidy drives miles from his home to collect his mail in Avon, but because he regularly carries a concealed handgun pursuant to Colorado law, he is barred by a Postal Service regulation, adopted in 1972, from parking in the post office parking lot and entering the building itself. In 2010, after landmark rulings by the Supreme Court of the United States in District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago, Mr. Bonidy asked the Postal Service whether he would be prosecuted if he carried his firearm into the post office or locked it in his vehicle in the post office parking lot. The Postal Service’s top lawyer wrote back that “carrying firearms, openly or concealed, onto any real property under the charge and control of the Postal Service” is still barred by Postal Service regulation.

On two separate occasions, the district court denied attempts by the U.S. Department of Justice to dismiss Mr. Bonidy’s lawsuit, and during oral arguments, sharply challenged the federal lawyer’s assertion that the Avon Post Office parking lot is a “sensitive” place that allows the Postal Service to curtail Second Amendment rights. Then, last month during oral arguments on cross motions for summary judgment, the judge upbraided the federal lawyer, saying, “There’s a difference between all of this broad, general restriction and an individual situation . You know, this is more of what we are seeing — regulatory authority prevails, period. It isn’t going to happen [here].”

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