San Bernardino shooting: Barack Obama says US 'will not be terrorised' as Isis praises attackers as 'martyrs'

President raises the question of gun control after latest mass shooting in the country leaves 14 dead

A makeshift memorial in San Bernadino, where 14 people were shot (Reuters)

President Barack Obama said the United States “will not be terrorised”, following the mass shooting by a husband and wife who killed 14 people in San Bernardino. The call came as Isis praised the attack, claiming the pair were “supporters” of the group.

Despite the statement by Isis – which increased the anxiety in America of a future threatened by religious fanaticism within the country – there was still no evidence that the gunman, US-born Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and his spouse, Tashfeen Malik, 29, a native of Pakistan, were acting under direction from Isis or any other terrorist organisation.

The couple burst into a holiday lunch for workers in the San Bernardino health department on Wednesday, where Farook was also an employee, and opened fire. Some hours later they both died in a shoot-out with the police. The authorities subsequently discovered a huge arsenal of guns, ammunition and pipe-bombs in their home and car, suggesting that perhaps they had been planning additional attacks.

The massacre – the worst since the slaughter of students and teachers at the Newtown elementary school in Connecticut almost three years ago – was at first thought to be the result of a possible workplace grudge; while multiple motives have not been ruled out, by Friday night the FBI was clearly saying that their investigators were treating it as an act of terrorism.

The broadcast by Isis, which called for the pair to be accepted “as martyrs”, came a day after Facebook confirmed that comments praising the group were posted around the time of the shooting to an account on the social media website established by Malik under an alias. The message reportedly professed allegiance to a leader of Isis. The Los Angeles Times yesterday cited unnamed government officials saying that Farook had been in contact with other overseas terror groups, including the al-Nusra Front in Syria, although there were no further details about what that contact might have entailed.

James Comey, the director of the FBI, said the assailants showed signs of “radicalisation”, but added that that did not mean they were actually part of a larger terrorist network.

The impact of the attack in San Bernardino, a city about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, on the psyche of the country is already being felt, with many Americans now questioning their day-to-day safety.

Yesterday, Mr Obama used his weekly radio address to try to reassure a jittery nation – saying that it is “entirely possible” that the two attackers were radicalised to commit “this act of terror”, but that the American people “are strong. And we are resilient. And we will not be terrorised.”

The tragedy, meanwhile, is adding fresh ferocity to the debate about gun control. Even as the news of the attack was breaking on Wednesday, Mr Obama publicly questioned why those people who are barred from getting on an aeroplane because they are on a terror blacklist can nevertheless go to any gun shop in America and buy weapons. In his address yesterday, he described that situation “insane”, calling for Congress to close the loophole. “If you’re too dangerous to board a plane, you’re too dangerous, by definition, to buy a gun,” he said.

The topic of gun control also moved The New York Times yesterday to run an editorial on its front page for the first time since 1920, calling it “a moral outrage and a national disgrace” that the assailants could simply go out and purchase the guns used in the attack: “These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection,” the newspaper said.

“America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday,” the editorial continued. “They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: these spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.”

However, in a sign that the issue of gun control will seemingly always divide the nation, Donald Trump, the Republican White House frontrunner, dismissed The New York Times’s call for action, in typically brash style. “People in this country and the world need protection,” Trump told reporters in Iowa before a campaign event. “If you look at Paris, they didn’t have guns and they were slaughtered. If you look at California, they didn’t have guns and they were slaughtered.”

Investigators in the San Bernardino case were also examining the background of Farook’s spouse. The couple lived with her mother, to whom they gave their six-month-old infant before carrying out the attack that also ended with them losing their own lives.

Mr Comey conceded that there was still much that was unknown and baffling about the couple. Investigators were sorting through “a lot of evidence that doesn’t quite make sense”, he said.

Lawyers for the family, meanwhile, were adamant that neither Farook nor his wife had exhibited extreme views, describing the latter as “just a housewife”. One of the two lawyers, David Chesley, added: “If the most evidence there is to any affiliation is a Facebook account under another person’s name ... then that’s hardly anything at all.”

President Obama with James Comey (AP)

Although in its broadcast IS described the couple as “supporters”, it did not call them by the names they usually give fighters for their cause, such as “lions” or “mujahedin”. And the group stopped short of saying that the attacks had been carried out at its behest.

But family members and former friends of the wife in Pakistan told Associated Press yesterday that she had appeared to become more conservative in her religious views and behaviour in the past three years, for instance forsaking the Western clothes she used to wear for more modest garb, including the burqa.

“I recently heard from relatives that she has become a religious person and she often tells people to live according to the teachings of Islam,” said Hifza Batool, 35, a teacher.

That Malik was granted a fiancée visa to enter the country and, thereafter, a green card is certain to spark new calls for a tightening of screening procedures for foreigners entering the United States.

Speaking about Isis, Mr Obama said yesterday that everyone needed to work together to prevent the influence of Isis and other groups from spreading. “We know that IS and other terrorist groups are actively encouraging people – around the world and in our country – to commit terrible acts of violence, often times as lone wolf actors,” he said.

“All of us – government, law enforcement, communities, faith leaders – need to work together to prevent people from falling victim to these hateful ideologies.”