Another Mass Shooting

Another mass shooting and we and our elected officials in the United States need to get serious about taking guns out of the hands of unstable people.

Details of the shooting in San Bernardino, California continue to emerge. We know that Syad Rizwan Farook, a 28-year-old county restaurant inspector and Tashfeen Malik, his 27-year-old Pakistani-born wife, armed with assault rifles, walked into a center for the disabled and opened fire.

Dressed in black paramilitary gear, they blasted as many as 75 rounds into a group of his county colleagues who had gathered in a big room for a holiday party. Farook had apparently been at the party, but left and returned suited up to kill.

Investigators told reporters the couple had enough bullets and bombs to kill hundreds more people. They left behind three pipe bombs with remote-control devices, but the bombs malfunctioned.

Four hours after the slaughter, police caught up with the couple two miles away and began a furious shoot-out. Farook and his wife fired 76 rounds and law enforcement officers blasted 380 rounds killing the couple.

The AP quoted an unnamed intelligence source who said Syed Rizwan Farook used social media to get in touch with extremists who were under FBI watch.

Los Angeles FBI Assistant Director David Bowdich told the AP, “There was obviously a mission here. We know that. We don’t know why. We don’t know if this was the intended target or if there was something that triggered him to do this immediately.”

Two days after the couple’s rampage, the FBI began to investigate this as a terrorist attack.

The couple dropped off their 6-month-old daughter with relatives before they went on the rampage.

Beyond the still emerging details, we grieve for the 14 dead and our hearts go out to their families and the injured.

President Obama continued his call for sensible gun reform. He told CBS News, in a previously scheduled interview, “….obviously our hearts go out to the victims and the families. The one thing we do know is that we have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world. And there are 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.”