San Bernardino, Part I

A young couple, with the husband having a good job, and with having a six month old daughter, and by all accounts living the American Dream, decided to give it all up in order to commit mass murder at the San Bernardino Inland Regional Center. As is the policy of this blog, I refuse to name the perpetrators. However, they were both Muslim. 14 people were killed and at least 21 were wounded.

When the police tracked them down, they were found to have "1400 assault rifle rounds and 200 handgun rounds" in their vehicle. A search of their home revealed "a dozen pipe bombs, 2000 9-millimeter handgun rounds, 2500 .223-caliber assault rifle rounds, and hundreds of tools that could have been used to make more explosive devices..." (Data from LA Times, 12/4/15.)

It was reported that the husband had been to Pakistan, and twice to Saudi Arabia, the second trip apparently being for the purpose of bringing back his future wife. Some in the media have reported that the wife had sworn her allegiance to the head of ISIS. Meanwhile, much of the mainstream media, along with Democrat leaders, felt that the story was all about guns. President Obama said that these mass killings have "no parallel anywhere else in the world."

John Lott had a piece in the 12/3/15 Investor's Business Daily. (Lott holds a Ph.D. in economics and has worked at various universities as well as the conservative American Enterprise Institute. He is an advocate for gun ownership, but has been accused of having his studies funded by the NRA and a gun manufacturer, which he denies. So, there is your background.) He points out in his article that the number of deaths from mass killings in the US during Obama's nearly 7 years in office totals 394. However, he says that in just this year alone, France has had 508 fatalities from mass killings.

In looking at the rate (as opposed to actual number) of mass killings from 2009 to mid-June, 2015, Norway came in with the highest rate at two per million people. It was followed by Macedonia, Serbia, Slovakia, Finland, Belgium, the Czech Republic and then the USA. Closing out the top ten were Austria and Switzerland.

In support of Obama's plan to bring at least 10,000 Syrian refugees to the US (Hillary says it should be 65,000) he mocked Republicans, claiming they feared widows and children. Mockery has always been Obama's preferred debating technique. In any event, he ignored the fact that many young men would also be among those refugees. And now we see just how well the supposed strict vetting program of those refugees would likely work. The murdering wife came to the US on a "fiance visa." Both the FBI and Department of Homeland Security ran background checks on her - and cleared her for a conditional green card.

This woman had a six month old daughter. Yet, she would clearly be one of those women Obama would say we have no reason to fear. What kind of mother abandons her newborn child in order to commit mass murder? Was she driven to do it by the easy accessibility to guns? Or, was she driven to such behavior by the evil ideology of radical Islam? Reading the 12/3/15 editorials in the LA Times ("Horror in San Bernardino") and NY Times ("The Horror in California") one would reasonably conclude that it was all about access to guns. Neither editorial mentioned that the couple was of the Muslim religion, nor that they were drawn to radical Islamic ideology.

The LA Times editorial said that "the common element in the vast majority of these mass killings - and in the daily parade of violence across the country - is the easy access to firearms." They go on to state that "from 1998 to 2013, an average of 11,500 homicides each year were committed with guns in the US."