Previous Post
Next Post

Screen Shot 2015-11-26 at 6.08.05 AM

“If somebody came in and asked me, ‘Lisa, can I take my gun on the train?’ I would say, ‘No, you can’t.’ That’s really bizarre.” – Alburg, Vermont gun dealer Lisa McCrillis in Bernie Sanders Claims Vermont’s Hunters Need Their Guns on Amtrak, The Hunters Disagree [at thedailybeast.com]

Previous Post
Next Post

54 COMMENTS

  1. Um if a hunter going to hunt. If an athlete going to a shooting competition. If everyone else for self protection. I think there is 3 good reasons to travel with a gun. The cost and hassle of buying a new gun everywhere you go? Through in a 1,000 trigger job for each……

    • One more:
      I’m currently visiting family seven states away. We took my teenage nephews shooting for the first time. Guess what was in my huge Pelican case with the locks on it. (In addition to the 9mm compact for self defense.)

      • Drove to Georgia for the holiday. My GF packed her S&W M&P Shield .40 and I carried my H&K VP9, GLOCK 30, and suppressed Colt LE6920. We were the hit of the party, which had plenty of shooters in it’s midst.

    • Yeah, but sedation is highly regulated now. It is considered a chemical restraint, and thus governed in many areas the same as 4 point leather restraints. Also thanks to liberal thinking.

  2. Because guns!

    Because I lost my security blanket when I was 6.

    Because I can’t afford the tickets for my security detail. Or a security detail.

    Because I can.

    • Northeast. There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance running around up there. They actually believe that different rules for different classes *creates* equality rather than destroying it utterly.

    • Your going by 1 snippet of an entire interview, I read the article and the writing is garbage. You jumping to the Fudd conclusion may be unwarranted. The other gun dealer they spoke to was referring to not being on a train travelling through NY which could land the traveler into hot water.

        • Liberal editing can make almost any comment seem the way they want.

          “I love my second amendment, plus some guns are bad ass”.

          Paper: Second Amendment supporter agrees “Guns are bad”

      • The comments from gun dealers appear to be out of context, or at least, left with enough ambiguity, so they could sway either way.

  3. Is this the nuclear-hardened train that just rides around on the rails or is the rider going somewhere with a planned purpose, say hunting?

  4. Obviously it’s because the second amendment says right there in it “…the right to keep and bear arms to go hunting…” Nobody needs to travel with a gun for any other reason! Especially not on public transportation. Good grief.

    • Nobody takes their hunting gun on the train. You take your train gun! I didn’t spend $1200 on this just to leave it home and have to take my laundromat gun. That’s like bringing your BBQ gun to church.

    • I guess Andrew. Haven’t been on a bus or the el since the 80’s. Scary as hell then-I was attacked,intervened in an assault, witnessed crimes and did all of this completely unarmed. I guess I was a “righteous bad-azz” then-and very strong. I wouldn’t do that now unless I had a gun…as the natives are restless “protesting” the shooting of a PCP addled knife-wielding minor criminal…

  5. A large portion of the population don’t even realize you can check guns as baggage on airplanes.
    And the odds of finding a hunter that rides the train is about as slim as finding…anybody that rides the train.

    • I have a friend and colleague who lives in Connecticut and frequently takes the Amtrak business class down to D.C. where a lot of his work occurs. Unfortunately, people who live in the vast supercity/extended urban area that runs from Boston to D.C. A) Have little idea how the rest of the country lives B) Don’t understand or don’t care how much other-peoples’-money subsidizes their Amtrak ride.

  6. Why is it that when I think about the 2016 elections, the phrase” scraping the bottom of the barrel” forcefully comes to mind?

  7. The comments by gun dealers in this article are ambiguous.

    I, myself, was once misrepresented in a article. It’s not hard to do and anti’s are the honest types.

    • Yes, I have a feeling that if they just asked if they knew anyone who had ever traveled on Amtrak they would have gotten the same answer. It’s not that people don’t want to bring their guns with them when riding the train, they just don’t want to ride the train period. Fortunately (sarc.) Amtrak has a bottomless pit of taxpayer funds to draw from to make up for their lack of paying customers.

  8. I believe those off duty soldiers that stopped a terrorist attack last summer between Paris and Amsterdam were on a train. Just think how much more effective they would have been if they had been allowed to carry.

    • 1) That’s Europe. Trains are different there.

      2) But then someone could have gotten hurt.

      3) In a terrorist attack, it’s better to run, hide, or fight back with the stuff on the train. Leave the shooting to the authorities. Even if it will take a while for them to arrive.

        • But what if you miss and the bullet goes through the train and hits a rare, endangered, yellow spotted, green lizard? Are you saying that your safety is worth more than the life of a creature whose existence we can never appreciate or comprehend?

        • A delightfully snide sense of humor, Katy…

          ‘F’ the lizard and while we’re at it, let’s dump some PCB’s in the reservoir and kill the last Snail Darter… 🙂

          It pains me to no end that there are actually people out there that think that way.

          And they vote.

  9. You can take a gun on a plane with you. Just check it, and go.

    I’m not sure why this is any different? Why should trains be any different?

    If you stop and get off the train, you are obligated to be in conformance with local law — just like flying.

    If you fly from Arizona to NYC with a gun (legally checked), and you are picking up a rental car and driving to PA, it is legal to transport the gun. If you are stopping in NYC and staying overnight, it is not legal (under FOPA)

    • On the other hand, my understanding is that if you are flying from PA to AZ, driving a rental to the airport in NYC, you should still be protected. But you won’t be.

      • You are correct. You can’t take possession of your weapons in NYC. If you took a regional flight to NYC the airline has to transfer your weapon to the next plane. If your flight gets canceled they will try to give you your luggage and if you take it it’s a felony. As long as you don’t have access to it your fine, though. You can even drive through NYC with it in your trunk as long as you don’t commit any other stupid felonies like stopping for gas.

        • If memory serves, Gov, it’s worse than that.

          There was a flight that had an emergency landing in NY (*not* the flight’s intended destination) and as the gun owner declared the gun for the flight out (as required by law), was arrested.

          Does anyone know the particulars on that case?

  10. I’m thinking about what bothers me about his and I think I’ve found a threefold answer.

    1) they seem to be conflating the ability to check baggage – to ship cargo – with ready access to your personal goods.

    2) the argument is that nobody takes the train to go hunting. One asserts that taking the train leaves you needing a cab to the hunting grounds. And yet they assert that people will fly. And how do they get to the site from the airport?

    3) all these folks seem to go hunting on their own. Do none of them have friends that could pick them up from the airport or train station?

    Bonus) I’ve taken the train. I used to live outside DC and train was indeed preferred. I also know and recognize that trains get massively delayed outside of the NE Corridor – those are the only Amtrak owned lines. The rest are freight lines and freight gets priority, meaning you may sit for 10 hours as freight backlogs clear out of Chicago. That also means you can’t enjoy high speeds and it will take three days to go from DC to Houston but you will pay double or triple what a flight would cost. So of course nobody wants to take the train to go hunting nationally, but I can still see the value locally and regionally.

    Have I mentioned how touchy a subject trains are for me?

    • Good eye. Two of the “gun store” people mentioned flying. One said flying with a gun was “hellish”.
      I’ve done it many times.
      At best-having good conversations about hunting.
      At worst-waiting for the gun checker person.

      • What I have enjoyed the most is when the ticket counter person has asked me to take the gun out of the case and demonstrate that it is unloaded. I am not terribly comfortable holding a hand gun and racking the slide in an airport when only that ticket person is aware that they instructed me to.

        • Maybe it’s an airport- or airline-specific custom, I haven’t been asked to “show clear” in years. When I fly out of Boston Logan or TF Green in Rhode Island, I show the locked metal travel safes that I use when flying. The agent asks if the firearms are loaded and if my ammo is in its original boxes, but that’s about it. The same applies when I fly out of McCarran and other destination airports. Which is great, because I don’t want to be displaying a gun at an airport.

        • Come to think of it, it has been a few years since that last happened to me too. Maybe they figured out it was a bad idea.

        • That is the way it is supposed to be done but like Ralph said below, hardly anybody asks you to show unloaded. Most of the time, they don’t even have me unlock the case when it will be placed inside my other luggage. If the case is a separate pics of luggage, they only have me open it to place the “firearm unloaded” declaration card inside. Even then they don’t look at the gun.

  11. Now using “The Daily Beast” as a source? That’s worse than huffpo or NYTimes. Really digging for the bottom of the barrel.

  12. The answers the fudd gun shop people gave…
    I weep for their stupidity and lack of support for the second amendment.

  13. I don’t see why public transportation should be any different than driving. If you’re legal to carry a weapon in the local shopping mall why wouldn’t you be legal to carry on a train? If a private transportation company doesn’t want you carrying that’s their prerogative, so long as they’re not a pseudo-private company propped up by taxpayers.

  14. I think the biggest problem with traveling on a train with firearms is the total lack of security. They juat are not equipped to securely transport firearms. Airlines are better at it, but still have issues. I personally would not take anything more expensive than a “C” series Kahr on a flight. Has anyone ever been searched getting on a train? I wonder just how many people just carry on the trains.

    • I’ve taken Amtrak probably a dozen times since I stopped flying, and the only time I ever saw any type of TSA-style search was while leaving Chicago. Even then it wasn’t 100%, they were simply pulling random people from the departure line to do a cursory baggage and wand search. In DC the Metro cops were directing bomb-sniffing dogs, but mostly just stood around.
      There also is no such thing as “checked” baggage on many trains, carry-ons only.

      Often during the 10min stops to pickup/drop passengers and they let people off to smoke, I’ve noticed people smoking pot from sneaky pipes. It seems to be a popular pastime on really long train rides. I just bring my own liquor and food since the beer and shots sold on trains are astronomically expensive.

      There’s certain tricks to riding Amtrak and having a good experience; once I figured them out, I found that I prefer it infinitely more than flying.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here