A man acting erratically on a Chicago-bound train was discovered by a railroad worker who called the police. Officers found weapons and a pamphlet about crowd control in his carry-on bag — and a plan for a major casualty event.
Nearly two years later, federal authorities say The man accused With an assassination attempt on him President Donald Trump in White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner He was arrested Saturday with a rifle and a semi-automatic handgun that he brought with him to Washington, D.C., on an Amtrak train from California.
It’s just the latest security incident involving long-distance public land transport – and it won’t be the last unless Amtrak Other companies are finding a way to handle passenger screening and security at their stations, say union officials who represent employees on the train.
An Amtrak spokesman declined to discuss security or say whether or not it was Cole Thomas Allen Follow company protocol for transporting firearms. Amtrak is working with federal investigators to provide his travel information, the spokesman said in an email statement.
Amtrak requires that firearms on its trains be declared, unloaded, secured in a hard case and meet certain size and weight requirements. These weapons are only permitted in checked baggage, similar to policies for transporting firearms via passenger aircraft.
But unlike airports where passengers undergo Transportation Safety Administration screening of their carry-on bags and persons, train passengers are not screened by security officials, whether they are boarding the train at an unstaffed station in Lamy, New Mexico, or at bustling Union Station in Washington.
Amtrak and many other ground transportation companies banned guns on trains and buses after Sept. 11, but none put security measures in place to screen or screen every passenger for firearms, said Sean Jeans Gill, vice president of government affairs and policy for the Railroad Passengers Association. In 2010, Congress passed a law requiring Amtrak and others to allow firearms to be transported as long as they are inspected.
In most cases, this means securing weapons and placing them in baggage carts that can only be accessed by staff. But not every train has dedicated luggage cars. When they didn’t have baggage carts, bags were zip-tied and tagged to show the presence of a firearm so workers could see if they had been tampered with, several former Amtrak employees said.
“It’s a bit difficult to take a train hostage, to say it’s different from the concerns that were raised after September 11 regarding an airplane,” Jens-Gilles said. “Amtrak has been largely safe from gun violence. The main incidents have been police shootings or interceptions.”
Railroad workers unions have begun demanding that Amtrak and other companies take a look at security during the COVID-19 pandemic, when enforcing mask wearing on trains has been difficult at best. They asked again after Flow of participants in January 6 riots He came to Washington by train and rowdy behavior on the way home raised concerns.
Amtrak drivers and other train workers often don’t speak publicly about accidents for fear of retaliation from the company, said Jared Cassetti, national director of safety and legislation for the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers-Transportation Department Union, or SMART-TD.
“Operator assaults are the most common conversations we have with our members, but firearms on trains are second or third in terms of worker concerns,” Cassetti said.
SMART-TD has had some luck pushing state legislation and has two bills pending before Congress. This legislation would eliminate jurisdictional challenges, making it easier to arrest and charge someone when a railroad worker is assaulted during a flight, and making interfering with a railroad worker in the course of his or her duties a crime similar to interfering with an airline employee on a flight.
The train conductor who identified a potential mass shooter in 2024 had just received union-sponsored security training, Cassetti said. He received some recognition but his arrest did not receive much news coverage.
The 2022 fatal shooting on an Amtrak train near Lee’s Summit, Missouri, received media attention after the train did not stop so employees could seek medical care for the victim until it arrived at the station, delaying medical care. A federal jury said in 2024 that Amtrak must pay 90% of the $158 million in damages to the family of the man, who alleged negligence including failure to implement reasonable security measures.
Michael Callanan, a former Amtrak employee who now works as a rail safety consultant, said he has heard of other security incidents involving drugs and other illegal items being smuggled due to a lack of security checks.
“They never want to spend money on infrastructure or security,” Callanan said. “Maybe this shooting is an important enough event to get Amtrak to fund things.”
Callanan said Amtrak police officers cannot be compared to TSA agents. They are primarily tasked with patrolling stations, conducting track checks, and occasionally riding lines and walking trains, but a single officer can own a large amount of land, he said.
“I think there’s one officer patrolling from Orlando to Miami,” he said. “Something needs to be done to enhance security.”
The Rail Passengers Association supports increased Amtrak police patrols on trains, but does not support adding TSA-style pre-boarding security to the nearly 500 stations across the country, Jeans-Gale said.
“The idea of expanding that, even outside of the logistics, if you look at the experience of riding on the Amtrak network, it’s very impractical because it ranges from Penn Station in New York where it’s very active, and many access points to the station, as opposed to an airport where all the traffic is filtered to specific points,” he said. “Then you have Whitefish, Montana, on the other side of the spectrum — a rural building that doesn’t have a lot of traffic.”
Cassetti said the difference in security needs is not lost on him. The union doesn’t expect a one-size-fits-all solution for terminals like airports, but it wants the conversation to start.
“We have to change the narrative on safety and realize that something must be done to prevent weapons from getting onto trains freely,” he said. “We sympathize with the challenge that Amtrak faces… When you start talking about how to secure the most rural places, and those that make up the majority of stations, it becomes a very daunting task. … But we need to have the conversation.”