‘Terror has arrived’: Official calls for San Bernardino employees to be armed

First District Supervisor Robert Lovingood is proposing arming county workers. (sbcounty.gov)

Two 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 it’s 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.

Lovingood’s 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, there’s 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 Sheriff’s 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 Sheriff’s 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 Lovingood’s proposal.

“The Sheriff’s Department supports any decision made by the Board of Supervisors,” she said.