Reichley Column: Let guns on the VRE

The Virginia Railway Express has voted to follow Virginia law, “allowing” law-abiding gun owners to carry their weapons on the VRE trains. Some people seem to think this is a problem, as if our friends
and neighbors who have long carried their guns around without incident will somehow turn into homicidal killers on their morning commute. 

After all, haven’t we all seen the movie “Falling Down,” which showed that we are all one rude driver away from blowing up a construction site with a bazooka? Of course, I haven’t heard of any incidents of
mild-mannered VRE commuters suddenly beating their fellow passengers senseless with a briefcase.

Columnist Davon Gray thinks the Virginia General Assembly should exempt VRE from the law. His main reason seems to be that there is something about trains that just make them a bad place for a
gun. He says that “a crowded train and random people carrying guns” scares him.  As opposed to a crowded street, or a crowded shopping center, or a crowded stadium, or a crowded park, or wherever
else you might find random law-abiding citizens who might be packing heat.

He says there are “too many threats on our transit system as it is.” Now, I hadn’t thought of the VRE as a dangerous place, but if there are “many threats,” I would think a person who owns a gun for
protection would want to have that gun with them to counter the “threats.” Not to mention that the right to carry a gun when you are not on the train isn’t much use if you can’t take the gun on the train.

Davon also explains specific rules in Virginia law about carrying guns, implying the rules change will bring out new owners who can’t be trusted to know how to properly behave. But I doubt that someone
who doesn’t own a gun now is going to think, “Hey, I should buy a gun now that I can carry it on the VRE.” 

However, there is one real problem — our basic right to self-defense ends at Virginia’s borders. Despite the court ruling lifting the D.C. gun ban, non-residents are still prohibited from carrying guns, with
few exceptions. This means most commuters will still have to leave their weapons home, even though the most dangerous part of their day could well be when they walk the streets of the capital. And
again, the right to carry a gun in some places is meaningless if you have to leave your gun at home because you are spending any part of your day in a place that treats you like a criminal.

The answer to this problem isn’t banning guns in more places, but to lift the non-resident ban on guns in D.C.  The ban doesn’t stop people in D.C. from being killed with guns, but it does guarantee that
the law-conscious citizens of our country are sitting ducks for any robber, mugger or miscreant who needs only to check a license plate to know that their victims can’t defend themselves.

In a related story, the U.S. Senate has voted to allow passengers to carry guns on Amtrak — but only in their checked luggage. Airline passengers can already do so, which again allows upstanding
citizens who can legally carry a gun to also take that gun with them on trips.  Amtrak used to allow guns, but stopped after the Madrid bombings in 2003 — once again showing how the terrorists win,
because when they break the law, our reaction is often to restrict the rights of citizens, in the name of “security.”

Interestingly, the argument against the Amtrak change is that Amtrak’s security is so bad that anybody could just steal the guns out of the bags, and it would cost too much to protect passenger
luggage. I bet most passengers didn’t know their luggage was left lying around to be plundered. And of course, if a terrorist or criminal can so easily steal guns from the checked bags, they could also put
bombs in the luggage. But apparently Amtrak figured that terrorists would somehow be stopped by a rule banning checked handguns.

If a person can legally carry a gun without causing trouble, there’s nothing special about doing so on a train. We shouldn’t restrict the self-defense rights of the innocent in the vain hope of stopping
criminals from doing bad things. Criminals don’t respect the laws, but they love when their victims are unarmed and helpless.

Charles Reichley has been a Prince William County resident since 1981. He can be reached at: .