Taking arguments to their logical extreme is a tool used to test validity.  But taking a gun to Disney World is barely a hop, skip and jump down the road. 

Via Turley, it seems that Florida has yet again emerged as the pre-eminent testing ground for all things bizarre.  This time, Florida has passed a gun law that doesn’t even begin to touch on the scope of rights that may (or may not) be covered by the 2d Amendment, and yet raises problems.  According to WESH in Orlando :

Several major theme park companies are challenging a new Florida law that allows people to keep guns in their cars.

The new law went into effect Tuesday and allows employees to bring their guns to work as long as they have a concealed weapons permit and keep the weapon in their car. 

Neither Disney nor Universal Studios is amused.  It seems that they don’t want guns on their property.  It strikes me that their parking lots will become a version of “guns-r-us” if they allow people to bring them, then force them to leave the weapons in cars.  Anybody want to venture back to the parking lot, unarmed, after a wild day at Universal to find out who’s been looking in your car?

The arguments flesh out like this:

“No guns on property. It’s a family facility. I don’t think there should be any firearms at all,” Disney employee Lee Morgan said.

“It’s typical of Disney. They have no regard for the safety of their customers or their employees,” Marion Hammer of the National Rifle Association said.

While I don’t think the NRA nailed this one, it’s just the beginning of an effort to change the face of society at the point of a gun. 

While the 2d Amendment applies only to the government’s (and for the moment only the federal government’s) efforts to limit the fundamental freedom of Americans to keep and bear arms, and does not have any bearing on the rights of private parties to prohibit weapons on their property, we must anticipate these situations arising on a regular basis from now on.  Consider, if people have guns (even though the 2d Amendment for the moment only provides a right to keep them within your home) on their person, they will still have guns when the enter stores, malls, entertainment venues and your home.

While the Supreme Court no longer seems to suffer the constraints of rational decision-making, as evidenced by pages 57-58 of the slip opinion in Heller, it may fall to other courts, legislatures and executives to explain how a right now enunciated can be subject to ad hoc application and denial.  In other words, now that the barn doors are open, it should come as no surprise that the horses are going to run out.

This will produce some wild and crazy results, and perhaps even some really good arguments by the NRA.  Stay tuned.