I guess it’s a rule that I never looked up before, but I did so before my trip tomorrow to watch the first playoff game between the New Jersey Devils and Tampa Bay Lightning.
Spoiler; I’m a Devils fan.
While I knew that the arena, like most (or all), has a policy of ‘no weapons’ on their property, I never really looked before. So today, I decided to see just what Amalie Arena had to say about the policy on their website.
No weapons of any kind are permitted in Amalie Arena. Licensed law enforcement officials attending the event as a guest are prohibited from carrying weapons.
Huh. I can’t say that I ever thought about it, simply because I guess that I assumed a member of law enforcement would be able to carry their firearm. I mean after all, they carry everywhere else.
While I don’t know if this is a policy at most arenas, it seems like a pretty useless one to me. This without even getting into letting others carry, like myself.
Their theory is that if they search everyone, then no one will have any firearms or knives or anything else they consider a weapon. But people get through and bad things happen, and at that point people will find themselves in a sticky situation.
Most of these arenas have police officers there for just this reason, but why limit an off-duty officer from carrying? Maybe it’s because they’d have a hard time identifying them, even with a badge, but it’s still a silly rule to have IMHO.
