Really, Amtrak?
Just as a guy travels from California to Washington with a shotgun and a pistol to try to kill the president, the train company is considering loosening gun rules. Yes, you read that right. The irony is not lost on anyone.
The proposal: put lockable safes in the carriages so that people can carry their weapons on board. Today it is only allowed on a few long-distance trains that have closed baggage cars. With the change, more than 1,500 trains a day could have weapons. That includes the Northeast Corridor, where 750,000 people travel every day.
The context that they don’t tell you
Cole Tomas Allen, who was arrested on Saturday, arrived by Amtrak from California. He had a shotgun and a pistol. He tried to get past the barricades at the correspondents’ dinner. A Secret Service agent was shot in the vest. He survived. Amtrak does not say whether Allen followed current rules, which require weapons to be declared and locked in checked luggage.
John Feinblatt of Everytown for Gun Safety puts it plainly:
“Just days after a man took an Amtrak train to Washington with a shotgun and a handgun and attempted to assassinate the president, the Trump administration is trying to open the firearms gates on all Amtrak routes. This will only make Americans less safe.”
The underlying problem
Here’s a detail that few mention: trains don’t have controls like airports. At small, unmanned stations, people board and the train starts before the driver even looks at the ticket. Under the proposal, it would be minutes before a gun is secured. Minutes in which anything can happen.
Sheldon Jacobson, the expert who helped design the TSA PreCheck system, puts it into perspective:
“The initial condition is that there are almost 400 million weapons in this country. We must start from there, not try to create a utopian environment where there are no weapons.”
Unions have been asking for protections for years. Since the 2017 shooting in Naperville, where a passenger shot a driver, they have not stopped fighting. Two bills in Congress seek to give them federal protection, like that enjoyed by air crews.
What’s coming
Amtrak and the Department of Transportation do not answer questions. Pressure from the Trump administration to loosen restrictions has been coming since the beginning of the year. And although Saturday’s attempted attack was real, the company has not abandoned the idea.
The proposed change: lock boxes on every train, only the driver has the key. But no one explains how they are going to verify who can legally carry a gun. In New York you need permission. In other places, no. How do you handle that on a route that crosses multiple states?
Jacobson sums it up: you have to weigh risks and rewards. For now, trains are safer than planes, and setting up a control system at each station would cost a fortune. But that changes if a major tragedy occurs.
Meanwhile, the question I ask myself as a mother: What if the next Allen doesn’t fail?
