Senate Votes to Allow Guns on Amtrak

The senate voted 68 to 30 on Wednesday to require Amtrak allow passengers to transport unloaded, locked guns in their checked baggage or lose its $1.6 billion subsidy, The New York Times reported. This requirement is similar to how the airline industry handles the transportation of guns but Amtrak protested that it did not possess the same screening capabilities as major airlines and would be unable to handle the new gun regulation safely.

            

While I fully support Second Amendment rights, I’m mainly interested in this story for what it says about Amtrak and government involvement in industry. Amtrak’s Chairman said that this new congressional mandate would require a significant amount of time and money to implicate – far more time than the six months the Senate is giving Amtrak to adopt the new regulation.

            

But Amtrak really has no right to complain because they got themselves into this mess in the first place by becoming a federally subsidized corporation unable to turn a profit or even stay afloat without Federal aid.

            

Personally, I’d like nothing more than to see Amtrak fail to implement this regulation in time, lose its federal funding and go bankrupt the way it should have years ago. With Amtrak out of the way, perhaps this country would finally see the rise of for-profit passenger rail service operated by leadership not beholden to Washington.

            

As far as other businesses are concerned, this Senate amendment should be a cautionary tale: take federal money and abandon the free market and some day you too will be told to implement costly new practices at the ideological whim of some senator.