I have good news for both of you Amtrak passengers. Starting December 15th you’ll be able to legally check an unloaded, locked, and cased firearm into baggage on Amtrak trains. What that means is you can do the same thing on Amtrak trains as you’ve been able to do on airplanes. There is something interesting in this article though:
Amtrak officials told the Bee that Amtrak, a federally funded train system, is retrofitting train cars for gun storage. There are no estimates of yet as to how many people will take advantage of the changes.
For some reason Amtrak has been doing it’s damnedest to bar passengers from transporting firearms on their trains. It seems they’ve found a potential delayer in “requiring retrofitting” of their train cars. As far as I know you’ve been able to check baggage on Amtrak trains forever so I’m unsure as of why they’d have to do any retrofit thus this seems to be s a delaying tactic. We’ll have to wait and see on that.
Oh, and of course the Brady Campaign has their bat-shit crazy unanchored in reality response to this:
Daniel Vice of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence countered that the rule change makes it easier for terrorists to bring weapons on trains with intent to do harm. He said his group and Amtrak police are pleased, however, to have won concessions requiring locked storage and 24-hour advance notice.
Yes because those evil terrorists wouldn’t bring a firearm on board without this ruling… that allows firearms to be transported in checked baggage just like on airplanes. I really wonder if anybody at the Brady Campaign has any roots left in reality or if they’ve all left this plane of existence for their deluded version of our world. What’s even more interesting is the following quote from Paul Helmke a couple of months ago:
Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said he “doesn’t have problems with people transporting guns on trains so long as steps are taken to make sure they’re secured and properly stowed.”
I guess when your cause has no roots in reality it makes it easier to change your mind ever thirty seconds.