Amtrak could soon be expanding the number of routes where gun owners can bring their firearms in their checked baggage, and one anti-gun activist has gone off the rails with his response.
Amtrak currently allows gun owners to bring their firearms along when they're passengers on trains that have locked baggage cars. According to the Associated Press, the Trump administration has been pushing Amtrak to expand that access by putting lockboxes on most trains. Passengers still couldn't carry their firearms on board, but they could at least store them until they get to their destination.
This seems fairly reasonable, unlike the reaction from the head of Everytown.
John Feinblatt, president of the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, said doing this would decrease safety.
“Just days after a man took an Amtrak train to Washington with a shotgun and pistol and tried to assassinate the president and other federal officials, the Trump Administration is trying to open the floodgates for firearms on every Amtrak route, while also moving to hollow out the agency responsible for enforcing gun laws and preventing gun trafficking,” he said. “This will only make Americans less safe and Congress must step in before the next tragedy.”
Allowing guns in locked boxes on trains is going to make Americans less safe? I thought Everytown was in favor of locking up unloaded firearms.
This policy, if enacted, would simply bring Amtrak in line with the rules for transporting firearms while flying. Given that the rail system operated $1.76 billion in the red in last fiscal year, Amtrak needs to be doing everything possible to be competitive with airlines, and making it possible for lawful gun owners to travel with their firearms on more trains is a small step in the right direction.
If the man accused of trying to assassinate President Trump had flown from Los Angeles to D.C., would Feinblatt be demanding airlines stop allowing guns in checked baggage? If he'd driven cross-country, would Everytown's president be calling for a repeal of the Firearm Owners Protection Act? I wouldn't put it past him, to be honest.
But here's what Feinblatt is ignoring: there is no TSA for Amtrak. No baggage screening. No magnetometers or body scans before passengers get on board. There's nothing stopping someone from carrying a gun on board an Amtrak train at the moment, except for Amtrak's policy about keeping guns in locked luggage.
Security expert Sheldon Jacobson, whose research contributed to the design of the TSA PreCheck system used in aviation, said railroads should do more to screen their passengers ahead of time by collecting more information when they sell the tickets and checking passengers' backgrounds. But he said it's not possible to eliminate guns on trains when there is no way to enforce the rule.
"The initial condition is that there's almost 400 million guns in this country," he said. "Then work from there as opposed to trying to create a utopian environment where there's not guns and we're going to keep it that way."
Rail travel poses fewer risks than air travel, so it wouldn't be worth the investment needed to create a strict passenger screening system at every train station similar to what TSA does at airports, Jacobson said. But he acknowledged that calculation could change if there ever were a major tragedy on a passenger train.
"You have to weigh the risks and rewards. And you have to say, 'Where are we going to put our money to get the greatest risk reduction for the greatest benefit with the least inconvenience to people?'" he said.
If Congress wants to step in, it should be to demand Amtrak allow lawful concealed carry as well. I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon, but that would be a major policy change. What Amtrak is considering now is basically expanding its current policy to cover more routes in order to serve more customers. That shouldn't alarm anyone, but activists like Feinblatt will do whatever they can to convince Americans to join their freak out... including hiding the facts from their audience.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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