{"id":293950,"date":"2026-04-30T23:06:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T23:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/293950\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T23:06:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T23:06:11","slug":"amtrak-may-make-it-easier-to-bring-guns-on-its-trains-despite-the-alleged-attempt-on-trumps-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/293950\/","title":{"rendered":"Amtrak may make it easier to bring guns on its trains despite the alleged attempt on Trump\u2019s life"},"content":{"rendered":"

By JOSH FUNK and CLAUDIA LAUER<\/p>\n

Amtrak is considering allowing people to store guns in lockboxes on most of its trains, which critics say would weaken security measures that instead should be strengthened in light of the shooting at last weekend\u2019s White House Correspondents\u2019 Association dinner.<\/p>\n

The company has been considering the policy change since at least early this year, after being pressured by Trump administration officials to ease restrictions on transporting weapons, two people familiar with the proposed plan told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they weren\u2019t authorized to speak about it publicly.<\/p>\n

They said the railroad hasn\u2019t abandoned the proposal despite Saturday\u2019s arrest of a man who authorities say traveled by Amtrak from California to Washington, D.C., with his firearms intent on killing President Donald Trump<\/a> and other administration officials at Saturday\u2019s event<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cole Tomas Allen<\/a> was arrested after authorities say he tried to race past security barricades near the hotel ballroom that was hosting the dinner, prompting an exchange of gunfire with Secret Service agents. A Secret Service officer wearing a bullet-resistant vest was shot in the vest and survived.<\/p>\n

Authorities say Allen was armed with a shotgun and semiautomatic pistol<\/a> that he brought with him by rail from his home in Torrance, California. Amtrak declined to say if he followed the company\u2019s existing rules, which would have required him to declare he had guns and allow the railroad to lock them up with his checked bags. A lawyer for Allen has said he has no criminal record and is presumed innocent.<\/p>\n

Amtrak\u2019s proposed rule change, which the railroad could begin testing soon, calls for adding lockboxes to its trains to allow passengers throughout the country to bring guns aboard, instead of only allowing guns on trains that have locked baggage cars, according to the people who spoke to the AP.<\/p>\n

The change would open up more than 1,500 trains a day to allowing guns aboard \u2014 including the routes that roughly 750,000 people travel every day in Amtrak\u2019s Northeast Corridor \u2014 instead of the current rule that only allows guns on a couple dozen mostly long-distance trains that have locked baggage cars.<\/p>\n

John Feinblatt, president of the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, said doing this would decrease safety.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust 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,\u201d he said. \u201cThis will only make Americans less safe and Congress must step in before the next tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officials at Amtrak and the Transportation Department didn\u2019t immediately respond to questions about the gun policy.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A passenger waits to board an Amtrak train at a station in Emeryville, Calif., Thursday, April 30, 2026. (AP Photo\/Jeff Chiu)\n<\/p>\n

\"Passengers<\/p>\n

Passengers wait to board an Amtrak train at a station in Emeryville, Calif., Thursday, April 30, 2026. (AP Photo\/Jeff Chiu)\n<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

An Amtrak train leaves a station in Emeryville, Calif., Thursday, April 30, 2026. (AP Photo\/Jeff Chiu)\n<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A passenger sits aboard an Amtrak train at Union Station in Los Angeles, Thursday, April 30, 2026. (AP Photo\/Jae C. Hong)\n<\/p>\n

Show Caption<\/p>\n

1 of 4<\/p>\n

A passenger waits to board an Amtrak train at a station in Emeryville, Calif., Thursday, April 30, 2026. (AP Photo\/Jeff Chiu)\n<\/p>\n

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\nHow this would change the rules<\/p>\n

Currently, Amtrak requires passengers to declare they are bringing firearms aboard and secure them unloaded in a hard case. The guns must meet certain size and weight requirements. Such weapons are only allowed in checked baggage, similar to policies for firearms being transported on commercial flights.<\/p>\n

This proposed change would still require guns to be locked up aboard trains, and only the conductor would have the key, according to the two people who spoke to the AP. But the plan would be to add lock boxes to every train.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear how Amtrak would determine who is legally allowed to carry a gun and whether local laws at their destinations would permit it. In some places, including New York City, there are restrictions on who can carry guns and a permit might be required. But other places have looser gun restrictions.<\/p>\n

Despite Amtrak\u2019s current gun policies, it\u2019s possible that some passengers are already armed or have carried guns on board. Unlike airports, which screen passengers and their luggage, train passengers aren\u2019t screened and Amtrak doesn\u2019t run passenger names through a criminal database to identify possible threats. That\u2019s true at crowded terminals such as Washington\u2019s Union Station and the tiny unstaffed stations throughout the country where trains stop in the middle of the night to pick up passengers.<\/p>\n

In those sleepy unstaffed stations, passengers routinely board and the train starts moving again before the conductor ever makes contact or scans their tickets. So there would be at least several minutes before a gun could be secured under the proposal.<\/p>\n

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\u2019 backgrounds. But he said it\u2019s not possible to eliminate guns on trains when there is no way to enforce the rule.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe initial condition is that there\u2019s almost 400 million guns in this country,\u201d he said. \u201cThen work from there as opposed to trying to create a utopian environment where there\u2019s not guns and we\u2019re going to keep it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rail travel poses fewer risks than air travel, so it wouldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou 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?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Unions have sought worker protections for years<\/p>\n

Unions have been fighting to strengthen passenger rail workers\u2019 protections for nearly a decade, after several incidents<\/a> like the 2017 shooting of a conductor<\/a> by an enraged passenger at the train station in Naperville, Illinois.<\/p>\n

Two bills in Congress would give rail workers similar protections to what airline crews have by making it a federal crime to interfere with or assault a rail worker performing their duties. The unions have also had some success getting states to pass laws.<\/p>\n

Amtrak and many other ground transportation companies barred weapons on trains and buses after 9\/11, but none put security measures in place to detect or screen every passenger for firearms. In 2010, Congress passed a law requiring Amtrak and other companies to allow firearms to be transported as long as they are checked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By JOSH FUNK and CLAUDIA LAUER Amtrak is considering allowing people to store guns in lockboxes on most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[5495,125076,48,52,51,47,50,49,52548],"class_list":["post-293950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-amtrak","tag-guns-on-trains","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-trump-assassination-attempt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}