It means a secret service agent will feel you up with a metal detector to ensure that you're not armed. (I enjoyed the style and pacing of this article: fairly entertaining.)
You'd likely have to leave or face a felony with 10 years prison sentence. (Per H.R. 347, it's 10 years for entering a secret service permanent or temporary restricted area without permission with a firearm.)
So, if I was there before anybody who had anything to do with the President showed up, and I had a legal firearm on me, and SS shows up and decides that I'm suddenly in a restricted area, I'm immediately a felon?
A couple of things: first, where the commenter you're replying to said "leave or face a felony" (emphasis added), and, second, where you happen to know that the author lives in DC, where there is no "had a legal firearm on me" unless he happens to be a law enforcement agent himself, which seems not to be the case.
I lived in DC for a while. You have to deal with motorcades, not just for the president, but anyone the SS thinks needs protection. As a pedestrian I've been forced to stop and wait on the sidewalk for ~20 minutes while the street was prepared for the motorcade, then while it passed by. This is part of life in DC. As a driver I've had a DC metro policeman, clearing the street for a motorcade, sideswipe my car in his motorcycle and just keep on going.
As to weapons, after DC vs. Heller some of the unconstitutional restrictions were nullified, but the prohibitions against carrying are still in place. It took decades of activism for DC residents to even regain basic civil rights, such as the right to keep handguns in the home.
If this had happened somewhere else (a place that allows concealed carry, I presume you're thinking), then I guess you would just be invited to leave the area before the president entered. Or maybe let an SS agent hold your gun for you.
It took decades of activism for DC residents to even regain basic civil rights, such as the right to keep handguns in the home.
I've lived in DC since 1999. I'll be charitable and say that this comment is misleading at best. It might be very narrowly and technically correct to say that there have been "decades of activism" on the subject, but it's about on the level of that one guy who sits in a tent in front of the White House every day. The overwhelming majority of DC residents were in favor of the law.
And I have no particular desire to be armed near the President, but I may have a desire to be armed in public without being shooed away all of a sudden.
