President Obama shouldn’t blame the National Rifle Association or Second Amendment freedoms for the mass murder in San Bernardino, an NRA executive says.
“Just when we think that politics can’t sink any lower, President Obama once again proves us wrong by politicizing the tragedy in San Bernardino before the facts were even known,” Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, wrote in a USA Today column.
After the mass shooting Dec. 2 that left 14 dead and 21 wounded in California, Obama called on Congress to pass more gun controls to make it harder for Americans to attain firearms.
“The NRA is calling on the president to stop exploiting tragedies to push his failed political agenda,” Cox writes, adding:
It’s shameful. Given the reality that he’s unlikely to listen, however, we will continue to stand and fight for law-abiding gun owners who are both disgusted and heartbroken by these heinous acts—whether committed by madmen, gang members or terrorists.
Authorities said Syed Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27, killed 14 people in a conference room who were attending a holiday party for Farook and fellow county employees, the Associated Press reported.
The AP reported that Malik had pledged her allegiance to the Islamic State, or ISIS, and the leader of the terrorist army in a Facebook post written around the time of shooting. The FBI said Friday it would investigate the shooting as an act of terrorism.
The couple were both Pakistani. Farook was born in America, while Malik came here from Saudi Arabia in 2014 on a fiancée visa. They died in a gun battle with police.
Although the San Bernardino attack soon was reported to be “the deadliest Islamic terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11,” Democrats quickly called for stricter gun laws.
“Sensible gun laws work,” Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said in a press conference Thursday. “We’ve proven it in California. And we’re not going to give up.”
Republican lawmakers in Congress pushed back against their Democratic colleagues’ urge to tighten gun laws.
In his column, the NRA’s Cox notes that California has the strictest gun control laws in the country:
And the fact remains that California has already adopted President Obama’s gun control wish list: ‘universal’ background checks, registration, waiting periods, gun bans, magazine bans and an expansion of prohibited gun categories. But those laws did nothing to prevent this horrific crime from taking place. Nothing.