Reason is winning out in some places on the left coast. Arming of county employees is being proposed by San Bernardino County supervisors. Concealed carry permit wait backlog is 12 months.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/02/04/terror-has-arrived-official-calls-for-san-bernardino-employees-to-be-armed.html?intcmp=hpbt2Two months after terrorists gunned down 14 unarmed San Bernardino county workers in a gun-free zone, one local official is calling for county employees to be permitted to carry guns at work and have access to weapons at county facilities.
The proposal made by First District Supervisor Robert Lovingood would have to be approved by the Board of Supervisors, but Longwood said its time to make a strategic shift. The plan has yet to be formally presented, FOX11 reported.
Empowering the people to protect themselves is a good place to start, Lovingood said in an opinion piece for The Victorville Daily Press.
Lovingood was one of the public faces in the aftermath of the San Bernardino attack, providing information to the public after two Islamic terrorists killed 14 people and wounded 22 others at a holiday party at the Inland Regional Center.
Terror has arrived at our doorsteps, and we will and we can never be the same again, he said during the first Board of Supervisors meeting after the attack.
Lovingoods plan is a three-pronged approach: Calling for county workers especially those with military experience to be voluntarily armed, advocating for a strategically located weapons cache and encouraging the populace to apply for concealed weapons permits.
Make no mistake: This is not a call for vigilantism, Lovingood wrote. This is a call for self-defense under the law.
The proposal has drawn mixed reactions so far.
I can see why that would be a really good idea, but I can also see why that would bother a lot of people for people to be armed here, Anthony McCune, a land use technician with the county, told FOX11.
While Lovingood works to drum up support for the first two points of his plan, theres already plenty of movement on the last one.
Gun sales have spiked in San Bernardino since the Dec. 2 shootings and so have applications for concealed carry permits. The county reported a nine-fold increase in applications in the month after the attack, according to The Desert Sun. Jodi Miller, a public information officer with the San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department, told FoxNews.com that more than 1,000 new applications have flooded in for concealed carry permits in the last two months.
But the Sheriffs Department has had a tough time keeping up with the deluge of permit requests. Miller said the department was adding personnel to help alleviate the backlog of applications, but as of now the wait is 12 months. Before the attacks, the wait was about three months.
Miller was asked if Sheriff John McMahon supported Lovingoods proposal.
The Sheriffs Department supports any decision made by the Board of Supervisors, she said.