San Bernardino Was Terrorism and Gun Control Won't Stop It

As in the case of the shooting Wednesday in San Bernardino, California, Democrats and liberals too often miss what the rest of us can obviously see.

Victims of the assault had not even reached the hospital before my inbox was full of emails from groups in the Obama coalition asking for my support and my money in the campaign to enact what they called "common sense gun control," as though that would have prevented the tragedy. Somehow, and maybe it is a congenital defect, they cannot call terror by its name.

It will take someone with a more extensive background in psychotherapy and the human mind to explain why the president and so many of his allies are going through life with blinders on. Remember how after the Paris shootings he suggested it was all somehow tied to global climate change which, parenthetically, he still calls a greater threat to the future of mankind than the activities of al-Qaida, the Islamic State group and the other groups who are using a radicalized version of Islam to recruit combatants into their army of death?

The images of the dead and wounded are sickening. They tug at our heart strings. They call to us for action, for anything that will help those of us who survived make sense of it all. Some are led to prayer even as others mock the idea that a renewed reliance on fundamental principles of faith such as "Love thy neighbor" will provide any kind of an answer.

Likewise we marvel at the courage of the first responders – especially the police who, of late, have been the ones wearing the metaphorical "black hats" in certain parts of California in and around the County of Los Angeles for being too rough on certain types of criminals and suspected law breakers. They rushed in to protect the living and to rescue the endangered without thought of how it might look if someone captured it all on a cell phone camera and then blasted it out on the Internet.

To those calling for more gun control in the wake of Wednesday's tragedy, I say that guns are not the problem nor are they even the point. All of you should be ashamed of your mawkish attempts to use this horrible event as an excuse to push legislation you've wanted since the 1960s and to which the American people continually say "no." It's not the National Rifle Association or any other group that's stopping you – it's the Constitution of the United States and the American people you have a problem with. They do not side with you no matter how you construct the polling questions and manipulate the results.

By all accounts, the weapons used at Wednesday's Christmas party massacre were obtained legally in a place that has perhaps the most restrictive gun control regime of any state in the country. The homemade pipe bombs – which thankfully appear to have been duds – are another matter. They are not covered under the gun laws and there's no waiting period involved for purchasing the components or for building one. I'm willing to concede there should be if that would make anyone happy, but all that ignores the essential point. It's not what they did that matters. It's why they did it.

This attack, like the shooting at Ft. Hood and so many other events that have been variously described as "workplace shootings committed by disgruntled employees, current or former" was terrorism. Whether it was imported or homegrown is beside the point. Call it what it is. Prepare people for the likelihood that attacks such as these will likely continue, especially when the leadership in Washington is so demonstrably weak. The president does not take terror seriously, or at least not as seriously as his predecessor and certainly not as seriously as events warrant. In that atmosphere there will be more of it, not less. Pretending it is something else doesn't change that.