Terrorist attacks can happen anytime, anywhere, so Americans who legally possess guns and are permitted to carry them should be prepared to fight back, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik tells
Newsmax TV.
"I talked to a lot of law enforcement groups in New Jersey and New York, and I have strongly started to change the focus to say, 'Look, you are legally allowed to carry your gun 24 hours a day. Now it should be mandated,'" Kerik said Thursday on "Newsmax Prime."
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The concern isn't with law-abiding moderate Muslims, Kerik said, but with extremists bent on attack.
"This is about extremists that come into this country for the sole purpose of annihilating Christians, of annihilating Westerners, Jews," he said. "We know they're here, they're going to go active at some point, and whether it's in a movie theater, whether you're dropping off your kid at school and they come into a school or a mall, we're going to run into this issue down the line a number of times in the future."
Citizens and police must be prepared at all times, he said.
"Whether it's cops or whether … it's other people out there that have firearms in their possession, somebody's got to start fighting back," Kerik said.
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