Should Guns Be Allowed on Trains?

Start packing those AK-47s for the train ride, because starting Dec. 15, Amtrak will allow passengers to store legally owned and unloaded guns onboard.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, guns have been banned on the taxpayer-subsidized commuter trains. But gun advocates said the edict was hasty.

"I think it was an overreaction based on I think some incorrect attitudes on the part of Amtrak and their leadership after 9/11," Senator Roger Wicker, the Mississippi Republican who proposed lifting the ban, told ABC News, "and frankly I think it was anti-gun, anti-hunter, anti-sportsman and unfair."

But said Daniel Vice, senior attorney for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, criticized the move.

"Once this takes effect," he told ABC News, "you would be able to check, for example, a dozen AK-47s onto an Amtrak train -- and once they're on there, the baggage car's not secure like a cargo hold of an airplane."

Commuters can check handguns, shotguns, rifles and starter pistols at stations that offer checked baggage service, including the stations in New York, Boston, Chicago and Washington, D.C, according to media reports. The guns must be unloaded and in approved locked hard-sided containers and passengers must declare their firearms and notify Amtrak 24 hours in advance.