Folks, can we all agree that there are places you probably shouldn’t bring a loaded gun, and that the list of those places has “Disney World” near the top of it? We can’t? Oh. Well, I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, just this weekend Floridian Angelo Lista brought his .380 Cobra on the Dinosaur ride at the theme park’s Animal Kingdom attraction, only to have the firearm fall out of his pocket during the bumpy trip. Luckily, the gun — loaded with five hollow point rounds — was found by a grandmother who turned it in to park officials.
Now, as a terrible kid whose parents rightly did not love him, I haven’t had the opportunity to check out Animal Kingdom myself. According to the website though, the Dinosaur ride is a “trans-dimensional joyride to the dinosaur age” that lets visitors “travel back in time on a perilous race to rescue an Iguanadon before the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs strikes.” Clearly, this is something that you would want to be armed for, because of all the scary dinosaurs one is likely to encounter on this perilous journey.
Disney World does have a policy against weapons on its property, though Lista — who has a permit to carry a concealed weapon in Florida — complains that the policy should be more obvious. If everyone will pardon me for a moment, I’m going to go have a rage stroke over the fact that there are people who need it spelled out for them that Disney World is not a place you should walk around with a loaded gun. But hey, at least he wasn’t walking around with it for long.
Okay, back. We just thank our stars that Lista didn’t leave his loaded firearm anywhere a child could have found it, like a…theme park ride. Oh. Never mind, then. Now we’re just thankful that this phenomenally stupid move didn’t result in tragedy. It does have me wondering what the requirements are for a concealed carry permit in Florida, though, and if doing something astoundingly dumb — like, oh, say leaving a loaded firearm on a dinosaur ride — is grounds for having that reconsidered. Just a thought.
(via Orlando Sentinel, image courtesy of flickr)
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