I doubt it has anything to do with that other than if that may have sparked this rumor. People have been stopped trying to bring a gun in many many times in the past, most are just politely asked to take it back to their hotel and come back.
It will certainly slow things down, but not to the extent HHN does I don't think. HHN slows things down so much because you have an entire park that is being filled right around capacity in the main walkways (not including Diagon), which is squeezing a lot of people in for just 6-7 hours.
Well yes the crowd arriving at opening is usually pretty big. The thing about HHN though is they begin scanning everyone about an hour before opening. In that one hour period they usually are able to fill the area between the metal detectors and the gates, considering that's about an hour and how many people they use that really isn't that fast. I'm going on my memory but I believe there are about 6 metal detectors in the main arch and 2 in each of the 6 smaller archers so thats 18 scanners. They typically have about two employees per scanner plus the whole no bag area so I would estimate they have about 30 security employees at minimum. I think something like the Magic Kingdom would need more than this probably more like 40 - 50 cast members working these things. They would also need to rework the lines quite a bit as they already have issues with it backing up.
If you were sure, you alerted a blues unit, who would then ask to see said bulge. However, looking for guns was frowned upon, as it was a 'waste of the undercover's time' to look for bulges. The two best we had at finding weapons were more often discouraged, rather than encouraged, to spot them.
They don't search people, they only search bags. A lot of people aren't aware of Disney's policy (it isn't posted) and or just forget or intentionally ignore it. Guns aren't usually and certainly shouldn't be carried in bags. Judging from the number of gun situations I've personally dealt with at WDW and assuming more went completely unnoticed than were discovered I would agree it has to be a very large number compared to what people think.
It's absolutely great. Much more like a smart sitcom than run of the mill adult animated series (i.e. Family Guy).
