TEXAS POLICE CHIEF, OTHERS URGE CITIZENS TO ARM THEMSELVES

DALLAS (AP) — A Texas police chief who warns President Barack Obama in a social media video that trying to disarm Americans would “cause a revolution in this country” is the latest law enforcement official to urge citizens to arm themselves in the wake of mass shootings.

Randy Kennedy, longtime chief in the small East Texas town of Hughes Springs, about 120 miles east of Dallas, says in the video posted this week on his personal Facebook page that the Second Amendment was established to protect people from criminals and “terrorists and radical ideology.”

“It’s also there to protect us against a government that has overreached its power,” Kennedy says in the video. “You are not our potentate, sir. You are our servant.”

He warned people in his town to prepare themselves: “Be ready when the wolf comes to the door, because it’s on its way.”

Law enforcement officials in Arizona, Florida and New York also have recently prompted citizens to arm themselves – some using similar comments aimed at terrorism.

Kennedy said his call to arms was the result of his disappointment with Obama’s Oval Office speech Sunday in which the president vowed the U.S. will overcome a new phase of the terror threat that seeks to “poison the minds” of people here and around the world. The police chief told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he’s not asking residents to turn into vigilantes or “become super action heroes.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS