Correspondents dinner shooter case raises concerns about security on trains

A man behaving erratically on a Chicago-bound train was spotted by a railroad worker who called police. Officers found guns and a crowd control leaflet in his carry-on bag – as well as a plan for a mass casualty event.

Nearly two years later, federal authorities say the man accused of attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday was arrested with a shotgun and a semiautomatic pistol that he brought with him to Washington, D.C., on an Amtrak train from California.

It’s just the latest safety incident involving long-distance ground public transportation — and it won’t be the last unless Amtrak and other companies find a way to improve passenger screening and security at their stations, say union officials who represent employees aboard the trains.

An Amtrak spokesperson declined to discuss security or say whether Cole Tomas Allen followed the company’s protocol for transporting firearms. Amtrak is working with federal investigators to provide its travel information, the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Amtrak requires firearms on board its trains to be declared, unloaded, secured in a hard case and meet certain size and weight requirements. These weapons are only allowed in checked baggage, similar to policies for firearms carried on airliners.

But unlike airports where passengers are subject to screening of their carry-on bags and persons by the Transportation Safety Administration, train passengers are not screened by security officers, whether they board at the unmanned train station in the unincorporated town of Lamy, New Mexico, or at bustling Union Station in Washington.

Sean Jeans-Gail, vice president of government affairs and policy at the Rail Passengers Association, said Amtrak and many other ground transportation companies banned guns on trains and buses after Sept. 11, but none implemented security measures to detect or screen every passenger for guns. In 2010, Congress passed a law requiring Amtrak and other companies to allow firearms to be transported as long as they were controlled.

In most cases, this means weapons are secured and placed in baggage vans accessible only to employees. But not all trains have dedicated baggage cars. Several former Amtrak employees said that when they did not have baggage cars, bags were zipped shut and labeled to indicate that a gun was present so workers could see if they had been tampered with.

“It’s a little difficult to hold a train hostage, to say that’s different from the concerns raised after 9/11 about a plane,” Jeans-Gail said. “Amtrak has been largely safe from gun violence. The main incidents have been police shootings or interdictions.”

Railroad workers’ unions have begun calling on Amtrak and other companies to examine safety during the COVID-19 pandemic, when enforcing mask requirements on trains has been difficult, to say the least. They asked that question again after an influx of participants in the Jan. 6 riots arrived in Washington by train and noisy behavior on the way home raised concerns.

Jared Cassity, national safety and legal director for the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers Union – Transportation Division, or SMART-TD, said Amtrak conductors and other workers on trains often don’t speak publicly about incidents for fear of retaliation from the company.

“Assaults on operators are the most common conversations we have with our members, but guns on trains are second or third in terms of concern for workers,” Cassity said.

SMART-TD has had some luck passing state legislation and has two bills pending before Congress. This legislation would eliminate jurisdictional issues by making it easier to arrest and charge a person when a railroad worker is assaulted while traveling and would make interfering with a railroad worker in the performance of his or her duties a crime comparable to interfering with an airline employee aboard a flight.

Cassity said the driver who identified the alleged 2024 mass shooter had just completed union-sponsored safety training. He received some recognition, but his arrest did not receive much media coverage.

A 2022 fatal shooting on an Amtrak train near Lee’s Summit, Missouri, attracted media attention after the train did not stop so staff could seek medical attention for the victim until it reached a station, delaying medical care. A federal jury ruled in 2024 that Amtrak must pay 90% of a $158 million settlement to the man’s family, which had alleged negligence, including failure to implement reasonable safety measures.

Michael Callanan, a former Amtrak employee and now a rail security consultant, said he has heard of other security incidents involving the smuggling of drugs and other illegal items due to lack of security checks.

“They never want to spend money on infrastructure or security,” Callanan said. “Maybe this shooter will be a big enough event to push Amtrak to fund things.”

Callanan said Amtrak police officers are not comparable to TSA agents. He explained that they are primarily responsible for patrolling stations, conducting track checks and sometimes roaming lines and trains on foot, but that a single officer can have a huge amount of territory.

“I think there’s an officer patrolling from Orlando to Miami,” he said. “Something needs to be done to increase security.”

Jeans-Gail said the Rail Passengers Association supports increasing Amtrak police patrols on trains, but does not support adding TSA-style security before boarding at the roughly 500 stations across the country.

“The idea of ​​expanding this, even aside from logistical issues, if you look at the experience of traveling the Amtrak network, is very impractical because it extends from New York’s Penn Station where it’s very active, to many access points to the station, unlike at an airport where all traffic is filtered to specific points,” he said. “Then you have Whitefish, Montana, on the other side of the spectrum: a rustic structure with little traffic.”

Cassity said the differences in security needs are not lost on him. The union doesn’t expect a one-size-fits-all solution for stations like airports, but it wants the conversation to begin.

“We need to change the conversation about safety and realize that something needs to be done to prevent guns from freely entering trains,” he said. “We understand the challenge this presents for Amtrak. … When you start talking about how to secure the most rural areas, and those that make up the majority of stations, it becomes a daunting, daunting task. … But we have to have the conversation.”