“It is entirely possible that these two attackers were radicalized to commit this act of terror,” Obama said of Syed Farook, 28, and his 29-year-old Pakistani wife Tashfeen Malik, who slaughtered 14 people and wounded 21 others at a year-end office party in San Bernardino on Wednesday.
The pair later died in a shootout with police.
The White House said in a statement that Obama had met with top security officials who told him that while there was evidence Farook and his wife had been radicalized, nothing at this point indicated that they were “part of an organized group or formed part of a broader terrorist cell.”
In a radio broadcast in English on Saturday, the ISIS group praised the couple as “soldiers of the caliphate” and martyrs but did not specifically say they were members of the terror group.
The mass shooting, the worst in the United States in three years, has again revived the debate on gun control in a country where such killings have become routine.
“Right now, people on the No-Fly list can walk into a store and buy a gun. That is insane,” said Obama, who has repeatedly urged tougher controls. “If you’re too dangerous to board a plane, you’re too dangerous, by definition, to buy a gun.”
The New York Times added its voice to the debate on Saturday publishing a front-page editorial — a the first since 1920 — calling for an end to “the gun epidemic in America.”
“It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency,” it said. AFP reported.
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