Florida sheriff says he’ll deputize gun owners if department can’t handle protesters

Clay County Sheriff Darryl Daniels released a three-minute video of himself standing with 18 deputies in which he condemned Black Lives Matter demonstrators as a godless group “making themselves a spectacle disrupting what we know to be our quality of life in this country.”

“If we can’t handle you, I’ll exercise the power and authority as the sheriff, and I’ll make special deputies of every lawful gun owner in this county and I’ll deputize them for this one purpose to stand in the gap between lawlessness and civility,” Daniels said in the video. “That’s what we’re sworn to do. That’s what we’re going to do. You’ve been warned.”