28 thoughts on “San Bernardino Could Have Been Prevented”

  1. What will work is:

    1. A populace unafraid of being called racists and islamophobes when phoning in suspicious activites

    2. A police force/constabulary willing to take the information seriously, covertly investigate, and willing to forward the information to federal authorities

    3. Federal authorities willing to make defending and protecting US citizens their most important task. They follow up.

    4. The end of gun free zones in public areas and a populace willing to exercise their natural right to self-defense. This is because #2 and #3 can take time.

    1. That makes too much sense for anyone currently running for president to support it, not without being labeled a racist gun nut by the press anyway.

      1. And regardless of the rare incident like the one I linked to, Israel’s gun laws are an interesting subject, since it is a country with an undeniable terrorism problem and a citizenry that is well-acquainted with using automatic weapons.

      2. anticipated objections and suggested remedies to alleviate concerns.

        Well Okeydokey Bob.

        1) A populace unafraid of being called racists and islamophobes when phoning in suspicious activities.

        Anticipated objection: It’s a good thing that these fears occur. They should be a permanent characteristic of our society and should be reinforced whenever possible.

        Suggested remedy to alleviate concern: Dismiss the deaths from islamic-inspired terrorism and reinforce the fact that the individuals would have died sooner or later anyway.

      3. After 2 muslims shoot and kill 14 and injure 21 in California, we can count on a progressive to find an article negative of Israelis to alleviate concerns that we might forget how much progressives hate that Israel exists.

        1. Curt, your attitude dooms you to the political margins. No one who has won the Republican nomination for President in modern times would give an answer like that. I bet I like the Republican party more than you do.

          Leland, just as I bet I like the Republicans more than Curt, I bet I like Israel a lot more than you, which is why I follow Israeli news. The incident described in the link I provided doesn’t reflect badly on Israelis — Israelis are only human. The incident does provide a cautionary tale regarding terrorism and prejudice against immigrants.

          1. I see bob now resorts to playground arguments; “oh yeah, well I care more than you do…” :p~

            The incident does provide a cautionary tale regarding terrorism and prejudice against immigrants.

            14 people are dead in San Bernardino because nobody tried to judge immigrants. There was no caution. There was no prejudice on the part of the people of San Bernardino. However, the couple that pledged allegiance to ISIS, did drop off their child with grandma, and then sentenced party goers to death for the crime of celebrating Judeo-Christian holidays.

            Bob, your stupidity is misdirected, but then that’s an evergreen statement about you.

          2. No one who has won the Republican nomination for President in modern times

            Please prove you are not a robot.

          3. “I bet I like the Republican party more than you do”

            I wouldn’t be surprised by that at all. The Republican establishment’s refusal to pick candidates their base will vote for is the main reason Democrats keep winning the White House.

      4. Bob

        What needs to be alleviated is jihadi terrorists taking up oxygen.

        What needs to be alleviated is innocent people getting gunned down and blown up in cold blood by jihadi terrorists.

        What needs to be alleviated is political correctness.

        What needs to be alleviated is the attempts to disarm law abiding citizens for no good reasons.

        We’ve already heard the “objections”…no need to anticipate them. They are all ridiculous.

  2. From the comments on your piece:
    This kind of thing leads you to the conclusion that Fascism really isn’t so bad.
    and
    If you got rid of the blacks, then gun related deaths would drop significantly.

    Yikes.

  3. The biggest lesson IMHO; the woman came in on a fiance visa, listing a home address that does not exist. This is absolute proof that DHS and FBI vetting of immigrants simply does not work.

    Whether it was a procedural problem or incompetence doesn’t matter; we have unarguable proof that their “vetting” does not work.

    So, somebody tell me again why on earth we should believe them when they claim they’ll vet the Syrian refugees?

  4. I am not certain anything would have stopped this latest attack. Maybe a halt to immigration from countries with sympathetic views toward the Islamic terrorists but that would have only stopped one of the people. It could be argued that the woman radicalized the man but we really don’t know and in any case there are plenty of examples of people being radicalized in the USA both from the internet and domestic connections.

    The problem with stopping an event like this before it happens is that aside from some tangential connections to groups that support jihad, they both had clean records. This is why extra background checks will not work.

    What we need, is to defeat ISIS and other groups militarily and to wage an ideological campaign. Obama says we must beat ideology with ideology, and I agree, except that just like his use of the word diplomacy, he doesn’t actually do diplomacy or wage an ideological war. Can anyone say what Obama is doing to combat ideology? Nope!

    Part of the problem on the ideological front is that our current President and his party are ideological allies of jihadis. In order to counter the ideology that drives the jihadis, Democrats would also have to change their own ideology. The challenge for the next Republican President is to both defeat jihad while somehow persuade Democrats to stop acting as apologists and defenders of Islamic jihad and change many of their deeply held views about the USA and fellow Americans.

    It would take a monumental shift in the Democrat party.

    2. One way or another, the West is going to end immigration from Muslim nations. Either it will happen peacefully because governments decide it’s a really bad idea–as already seems to be the case in much of Eastern Europe–or it will happen violently, when the West descends into civil war against the political class. When the status quo can’t continue, it doesn’t.

      Even my Muslim friends in the UK, who’d moved there twenty or thirty years earlier, were horrified to see the British government importing the very kind of people they’d moved to the UK to escape from.

    1. There is like less than 3% rate of this actually happening in ‘active shooter’ incidents. With more than one gun per person in US, you’d think these citizen heroes would have a bit more success, no ?

      1. Most places where active shooters target are “gun-free” zones, where the citizen heroes aren’t allowed to have their guns. If you’d read the linked piece, you’d know that.

        1. @ Rand,
          Good point.

          Unless I’m missing one, every muslim terrorist attack, save two, in the USA since 9-11 has been in a gun-free zone or area.

          The DC snipers, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, The Oklahoma beheading attack,
          Etc, etc,
          The recruiting office attack,
          The Garland, TX, attack at a Mohammed drawing contest,
          The Ft. Hood massacre, the Boston marathon bombing, San Bernadino.

          The two outliers (those not in gun-free zones or areas) IMHO are the is the Texas and Oklahoma attacks. The former ended up in a good way; two dead terrorists, with only one injury amongst the defenders. The latter ended worse, but the fast action of the plant manager who sedated the beheader with kinetic lead saved at least one other intended victim.

          Of course people intending to commit mass murder prefer gun-free zones; a gun-free zone massively increases the body count potential as well as simplifies their planning.

          A good analogy is airport security; its main value is that it complicates things for the attackers. Likewise, armed citizens complicate things for terrorists and other mass killers.

          An example is this Israeli incident; an armed citizen stopped an in-progress terror attack.
          http://concealednation.org/2015/10/warning-graphic-video-how-long-does-it-take-an-armed-citizen-to-take-out-a-terrorist-about-17-seconds/

          Gun-free-zone signs are simply target markers for terrorists and other mass murderers.

  6. We allow armored card deliverymen to carry firearms & wear body armor to protect greenbacks. But we cannot allow one or two armed police officers with “close-in combat” training to be “in-residence” to protect students in our public schools? We cannot talk about how to redesign schools to make it difficult for a shooter to amass casualties? Talk about broken priorities…

    1. There are other common-sense reforms that would help. Reopening the mental hospitals would both alleviate the problem of the homeless (many of whom are mentally ill) and would have kept people like Adam Lanza, Jared Loughner, and James Eagan Holmes off the streets.

      1. I would agree, Ed. The only problem I’ve seen with mental hospitals (we still do have them) is abuse by the political class. Take for example the President’s language this weekend [CNN paraphrase]: “it is “insane” that people who are not allowed to fly on planes are allowed to buy guns“. Fascist like Obama would use such language and their power to see political opponents declared mentally incompetent.

        And of course, the problem with the “no-fly-zone” is that it has no due process. You don’t have a trial to be put on it, and you have almost no recourse to get off of it. The right to bear arms is a fundamental human right that is recognized by our constitution. Obama wants to take away the right of self-defense by placing people on a list with no legal safeguards to protect civil liberties.

        I think we need to manage mental disability better, but we can’t do it with progressives running the place.

        1. I should have noted, none of the President’s “insane” proposals would have stopped of slowed down the last two shootings, or for that matter, Lanza or Loughner. Perhaps the insanity is the President proposing solutions that have nothing to do with fixing the problem.

          Further, the tougher immigration enforcement, such as increased scrutiny of individuals entering from war torn Middle East, might have picked up Malik. After all, she provided fake addresses. One didn’t need to ask her religion, they simply needed to properly vet the information she provided for her visa.

          The “no-fly-list” is meaningless to terrorist. We already know they are successfully using fake passports to travel around Europe and cross borders.

Comments are closed.