San Bernardino shootings bring American fears of gun violence and terrorism into sharp focus

Speculation is rife about the motives of a couple who opened fire at a party in California, in an incident that left 14 people dead. But fears of Islamist extremism should not distract from an equally chilling reality: that such mass killings are almost an everyday feature of US life

Survivors of the shooting in its aftermath (AP)

It is an attack that has stirred the twin American fears of gun violence and terrorism: a husband and wife, suspected to have been motivated in part by Islamist extremism, shot dead 14 people and wounded 21 others at a seasonal gathering in San Bernardino, California.

The couple, who had collected an arsenal including 12 pipe bombs and thousands of rounds of ammunition, were identified as Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, a food inspector with the San Bernardino county health department, and his wife, 27-year-old Tashfeen Malik. Both were killed in a gun battle with police some hours after the attack on Wednesday.

This was the deadliest mass shooting in the US since 2012, and yet such violence is increasingly commonplace in America: the San Bernardino massacre was the nation’s 355th mass shooting in 2015 – not to mention the second mass shooting of the day, following an earlier incident in Savannah, Georgia, in which one woman died and three men were injured.

Speaking at the White House, President Barack Obama called on politicians again to address the issue of gun control, because “right now it is just too easy” for people to acquire firearms. “It’s possible this was terrorist-related, but we don’t know,” he told reporters. “It’s also possible this was workplace-related.” The FBI was said to be treating the shooting as a counter-terror investigation, but proof of the suspects’ supposed links to Islamic terror remained elusive.

Law enforcement sources told CNN there was evidence that Farook had made contact with extremists domestically and abroad, including at least one person in the US who was investigated for suspected terrorism by federal authorities. The FBI has investigated thousands of Muslims with alleged ties to terror since 11 September 2001, but many were never linked to crimes.

The seemingly rushed nature of the attack, given the stash of weaponry the couple had amassed, appeared to suggest the motive was a workplace grievance. “You don’t take your wife to a workplace shooting, and especially not as prepared as they were,” one senior law enforcement official briefed on the investigation told The New York Times. “He could have been radicalised, ready to go with some type of attack, and then had a dispute at work and decided to do something.”

On Wednesday morning, the couple reportedly left their six-month-old daughter with Farook’s mother at her home in nearby Redlands, claiming they had a doctor’s appointment. Instead, just before 11am, they stormed into a Christmas gathering for health department employees, armed with assault rifles and clad in black tactical clothes, and opened fire.

Farook had been invited to the event, but left around 20 minutes before the shooting, possibly after an argument. “We do not yet know the motive,” David Bowdich, the assistant director of the FBI office in Los Angeles, told reporters.

Syed Farook, the suspect

As the media and law enforcement agencies descended on the southern California city, it soon became clear that this attack was out of the ordinary – not least because it involved two shooters, one of them a woman. Farook was an American citizen, born in Illinois after his parents moved to the US from Pakistan. Malik, also originally from Pakistan, had lived in Saudi Arabia until last year.

The couple first met when Farook travelled to Saudi Arabia in 2013 for the Hajj pilgrimage. After a second visit, Malik returned with him to the US in July 2014 on a so-called “fiancée visa”; they were married soon afterward.

Officials said neither had been on the radar of law enforcement agencies prior to the attack. All four of the firearms used by the couple had been legally purchased.

As the shooters fled the bloodbath and police stormed the building, Kevin Ortiz, 24, called his father from the scene to tell him he had been shot three times but would survive. He was lucky: the attack was the deadliest mass shooting in the US since the murders of 20 children and six teachers at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut three years ago.

Around four hours later, as police followed a tip to their home in Redlands, the couple were seen speeding away in a black 4x4. The pursuit took police back into San Bernardino, where they finally cornered the vehicle and exchanged fire with Farook and Malik, who were armed with AR-15 assault rifles, handguns and ammunition magazines containing more than 1,600 rounds. They had also left an explosive device at the scene of the shooting, which failed to detonate.

By the time the gun battle was over, two police officers had been wounded and both suspects were dead.

Elizabeth Garcia, 23, an employee at a public transport office a block from the shootout, said she and her colleagues had heard the gunfire. “We knew what had happened earlier in the day, so we all ran to the back of the room,” she said, as she waited at the police cordon at dusk to collect her four-year-old daughter, whose day-care centre was still in lockdown.

San Bernardino, 60 miles east of Los Angeles and with a population of approximately 214,000, is the poorest large city in California. It had become a single, sprawling crime scene, with investigations ongoing at the site of the morning massacre, the location of the later shootout, and at the suspects’ home in Redlands.

Muslim leaders condemned the attack at a news conference hosted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Anaheim late on Wednesday night. “The Muslim community stands shoulder to shoulder with our fellow Americans in repudiating any twisted mind-set that would claim to justify such sickening acts of violence,” said Hussam Ayloush, the CAIR’s executive director for the LA area.

Farook’s brother-in-law, Farhan Khan, offered his family’s condolences to those affected by the shooting. “I cannot express how sad I am,” he said. “I have no idea why he’d do it.”