I get your point, but as long as they cover ALL entry points, and ALL people coming into the space, this is not a classic "gun free" zone. It has long been my thought (and many others, I suspect) that any place the government wanted to be truly gun free was fine, as long as a) they provided adequate security against crazy people with non-firearms weapons, and b) they ensured that EVERYBODY in the space was equally dis-armed.
Courthouses and secure airport terminals being the general examples, it is this sort of full screening that has usually been too expensive to implement that keeps the "gun free" zone from being an actual gun free zone, and therefore gets people killed.
TFred
ETA: Now... the blocks AROUND the stadium, as spectators walk to and from the event... THAT'S a whole other story, and you are exactly right. Free unarmed victim zone for muggings and hold-ups!!
I won't go so far as "any place the government wanted to be truly gun free" being fine. I will concede there are some, rare, areas where there are legitimate security concerns that require disarming the public. Prisons, jails, secure mental hospitals, and possibly court rooms strike me as areas where there are sufficient, legitimate need to disarm the public as to justify disarming the public.
While talking about carrying guns into the cabins of commercial airliners will cause many a stroke, the fact is that prior to the mid-70s it was legal and fairly common to do so. Even after a few, rare, high profile hijackings created sufficient public alarm (History does repeat doesn't it?) as to get us to accept being disarmed on planes, pilots routinely carried for a long time. Concerns about a single shot disabling a plane are based almost entirely on Hollywood misinformation.
That all said, the rare location where disarming the public is truly warranted, also warrants true security rather than relying on the honor system. But even there we have the concerns about efficacy.
I would like to hope that the relatively small number of visitors to jails and courtrooms means that screening is far more effective than TSAs abysmal failure rate of something like 90% when tested. If only 10% of weapons smuggled in are detected and excluded, then we likely are back to not much more than an honor system with the law abiding not willing to risk a 10% chance of criminal charges, but a dedicated group of bad guys more than willing for 1 of their group to be caught before hand if 9 others can make it through to wreak havoc.
I suspect large venues like sports arenas with lots of people needing to be cleared in a relatively small amount of time are likely to produce TSA like results rather than doing materially better.
All of this, of course, ignores the risk to patrons between the point they are able to store their otherwise legally carried weapons and where they enter/leave the secure area. A parked car 2 to 10 blocks away is a long distance. Leaving the gun at home because one took mass transit is an even longer distance and time to be disarmed.
Which means that truly secure areas need to provide secure storage immediately before the secure checkpoint so as to minimize the distance and time that LACs are disarmed. All legislatively permitted government secure areas in Utah require secure storage at the venue. (Our courthouses continue to enforce gun bans without storage under their powers of contempt of court.)
Charles
