A sheriff's office north of New York City encouraged licensed handgun owners to start carrying their firearms on Thursday, one day after a mass shooting claimed 14 lives and injured 21 others at a social services center in San Bernardino, California.
In a Facebook post, the Ulster County Sheriff's Office urged residents to exercise their Second Amendment rights "in light of recent events that have occurred in the United States and around the world."
President Barack Obama, meanwhile, took the event in San Bernardino as an opportunity to call for stronger gun control laws.
"We have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world, and there's some steps we could take, not to eliminate every one of these mass shootings, but to improve the odds that they don't happen as frequently: common-sense gun safety laws, stronger background checks," Obama said on Wednesday.
Also on HuffPost: