Altidude is ToddZ

kateoplis:

The Senate voted Wednesday that Amtrak would lose its federal subsidies if it doesn’t put a system in place by early next year to check and track firearms so that passengers can legally put the weapons in their checked baggage.

Amtrak Chairman Thomas Carper in a letter decrying the congressional mandate:

“Unlike the airline industry, Amtrak has no system in place for a uniform system of screening for weapons. The railroad has no secure loading areas, and trains make multiple stops. Employees also would need intensive training.”

Further, he said, Amtrak has neither the money nor the time to meet the Senate’s timetable to put such a system in place.

Carper warned that if Amtrak were to lose federal funds, it would result in the “cessation of all Amtrak service nationwide.”

WhaaaAAA..?

Something doesn’t add up here and I’m not sure if it’s shitty biased reporting or shitty biased politicians.

“Under current practices, all of the American domestic airlines permit firearms in their checked luggage. Other American passenger railroads also allow checked firearms,” [bill sponsor] Wicker said on the Senate floor Wednesday.

“Only the federally subsidized Amtrak prohibits law-abiding American citizens from exercising their Second Amendment rights in checked baggage,” he said.

The measure lays out the following guidelines:
• Before checking the bag or boarding the train, the passenger must declare that the firearm or pistol is in his or her bag and is unloaded.
• The firearm or pistol must be carried in a hard-sided container.
• The hard-sided container must be locked, and only the passenger has the combination or key.

To protect gun rights, no special legislation or equipment is needed. I’m not sure how we get from there to the hysterics of Senator Murray and Amtrak’s Carper:

“Unlike the airline industry, Amtrak has no system in place for a uniform system of screening for weapons,” Carper wrote. The railroad has no secure loading areas, and trains make multiple stops, he said. Employees also would need intensive training.

“[Amtrak] would have to find the manpower necessary to screen and guard firearms, and it would have to purchase the equipment necessary. Now there is nothing in the underlying appropriations to pay for any of that. So this amendment is going to put a severe burden on them and if they do not comply, Amtrak will shut down.” [-Murray]

Given the current security model of occasional random screening, the current ban on all firearms is largely honor-system. Why would lifting the ban on firearms in checked bags require *more* security? It should require nothing more than the three guidelines above.

Is someone actually calling for a system to “check and track” firearms? Coming from a Republican senator, this seems unlikely. Is it just an illogical assumption being made by anti-gun zealots? Such a system would not be required to protect 2nd Amendment rights; in fact it could only serve to restrict them.

The article points out that other passenger rail lines in the US permit firearms in checked luggage; a.) Why wouldn’t they? and b.) surely they accomplish this without an entire division devoted to x-raying toiletries and shoes.