Amtrak union blasts plan to let riders carry guns in lockboxes on trains

The Transport Workers Union, which represents 360 onboard service workers at Amtrak, has come out swinging against a policy that would let passengers carry guns on the national rail operator's intercity trains. The union says the new rules are now scheduled to kick in January 2027, and it wants the federal government to kill the idea outright.

Here's how it would work, according to the union: a gun owner brings a cased weapon to a station agent, who attaches an Amtrak-owned combination lock. The passenger then carries the locked case to their seat, and an agent at the arrival station removes the Amtrak lock. John Feltz, the union's International Rail Division director, isn't buying the safeguards. A defective case or lock, he warned, or a rider using brute force, could put passengers and crew in danger.

Feltz leaned on a familiar comparison to make his case. You can't stroll onto a plane with a gun — it gets checked and stowed — so why allow firearms in passenger cars where people are packed into confined spaces? He called the whole thing sheer lunacy.

The scope of the change is what has the union rattled. Amtrak already permits guns on a handful of long-distance trains, kept in secure baggage cars. Under the new policy, passengers could bring weapons to their seats in lockboxes on an additional 1,500 trains a day across the country, said Brian Delucia, a staff representative at TWU International. That includes routes carrying roughly 750,000 people daily through the Northeast Corridor, home to Amtrak's busiest services linking Washington, New York and Boston.

Amtrak had floated the idea while under pressure from the Trump administration to loosen restrictions on transporting weapons, but hadn't put a date on it until now, according to the union. The TWU also points out that plenty of Amtrak stations have no Amtrak staff or law enforcement on hand to respond if something goes wrong. Amtrak did not immediately respond to a request for comment.