On July 30, 2026, Lauren Boebert introduced a bill with a friendly name and a very specific effect.

H.R. 9979, the "Freedom to Ship Act," runs about three pages. Most of it is about shipping companies. The last line is the part worth reading. Section 2(c) of the bill says:

"Section 1715 of chapter 83 of title 18, United States Code (and the item relating to such section in the analysis of such chapter), is repealed."

That is a citation, not an argument, so here is what it means.

18 U.S.C. § 1715 is titled "Firearms as nonmailable." It says: "Pistols, revolvers, and other firearms capable of being concealed on the person are nonmailable and shall not be deposited in or carried by the mails." It carves out exceptions for police, the military, and licensed gun dealers shipping to one another. And it says anyone who knowingly puts a handgun in the mail "shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

That law has been on the books in its current form since 1948. Boebert's bill deletes it — the ban and the penalty both.

She said so herself. Announcing the bill on X, Boebert wrote that her legislation "protects privacy, holds companies accountable and restores the ability to mail handguns through USPS."

Three other Republicans put their names on it as original cosponsors: Sheri Biggs of South Carolina, Michael Cloud of Texas, and Clay Higgins of Louisiana.

The other half: making it illegal for UPS to say no

The rest of the bill is aimed at private shipping companies.

It creates a new federal crime called "interference with the lawful transportation of arms." Under it, a motor carrier — UPS, FedEx, a freight company — may not "interfere" with a gun shipment, and the bill spells out four specific ways that counts:

• Declining to carry it. A carrier that says "we don't ship firearms" is in violation.
• Imposing conditions beyond what federal gun law already requires.
• Charging more for a gun than for another package of similar size, weight and hazard class.
• Requiring the shipper's consent to disclose information as a condition of taking the shipment.

The penalty: $10,000 to the federal government for every violation, plus a private lawsuit from the shipper for "all compensatory and consequential damages."

Sit with that for a second. This is a bill that tells private companies they are legally forbidden from declining a category of business, on pain of a $10,000 federal fine per package and open-ended civil liability. From the party that says the federal government should not tell businesses what to sell or who to serve.

The rationale Boebert gave is that under the Biden administration, some carriers made licensed gun dealers sign take-it-or-leave-it contracts. Her remedy is not to give dealers more bargaining power. It is to remove the companies' ability to decide at all.

What Boebert is not working on

Colorado has about 15.3 gun deaths per 100,000 people — 19% higher than the national average. Roughly 1,000 Coloradans die from gun violence every year. That is a plane crash a month, in her own state.

Boebert has been in Congress since 2021. Here is her record when the House actually voted on gun policy:

• She voted against the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, which would have required a background check on nearly all gun sales.
• She voted against the Enhanced Background Checks Act, which would have closed the loophole that let the Charleston church shooter buy his gun.
• She voted against the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — the first significant federal gun safety law in nearly 30 years, passed after Uvalde.

Against all three. And the bill she chose to write herself, in the summer of an election year, makes it easier to put a handgun in a mailbox.

This is not an isolated priority. It is what this group of Republicans does with their legislative time. Rep. Andrew Clyde, who owns two gun stores, spent this month demanding the ATF destroy the firearm transaction records police use to trace guns found at crime scenes. Rep. Barry Moore wrote a bill to make the AR-15 the national gun of the United States.

"Criminals still shipped guns through the mail"

The gun-media coverage of Boebert's bill is worth quoting, because it makes the argument more plainly than she does.

Writing at Bearing Arms, Tom Knighton argued the ban never worked anyway: "criminals still shipped guns through the mail if they wanted to. They just lied about what they were shipping, and there's no way the USPS can check every single box."

That is the case for repeal: the law is broken because people break it. It is not an argument anyone makes about laws they like.

Knighton also framed the timing honestly. "Having a Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate," he wrote, "allows pro-freedom lawmakers the leeway to introduce Second Amendment-friendly legislation that will actually be considered and likely voted on."

In other words: this is not a message bill. They think it can pass.

Where it stands

H.R. 9979 was referred to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the House Judiciary Committee on the day it was introduced. It has four Republican names on it and no Democrats.

Boebert co-chairs the Congressional Second Amendment Caucus. Repealing the mail ban is the kind of thing that caucus exists to do. The question for voters in Colorado's 4th District — and in the districts represented by Biggs, Cloud and Higgins — is whether that is what they sent someone to Washington for.

Source

• Boebert Introduces Bill to Protect Right to Ship Guns — Bearing Arms, August 8, 2026. Photo: AP Photo/David Zalubowski.
• Bill text and cosponsors: H.R. 9979 as introduced, 119th Congress.