San Bernardino Slaughter Close to Home

By Douglas V. Gibbs

My wife earned her degree from California State San Bernardino University.  Until last May, every Saturday I made the drive up to San Bernardino to broadcast on KCAA 1050-AM.  I have since moved to Banning's KMET 1490-AM.  I am a Southern California native, and I am quite aware of what San Bernardino is all about.  San Bernardino has been a part of my life, and frankly, the shooting that occurred this afternoon in San Berdoo is no surprise.

The city next to the mountains is our version of Detroit.  Los Angeles is crazy, but San Bernardino has always been the murderous little brother due east.  San Bernardino is bankrupt, and until Chicago stole the honor, was the murder capital of the country.  Now, the city is losing population quickly, and some of its streets look much like those in Detroit.  Empty, abandoned, and dark.  The Carousel Mall, which has finally been targeted for termination, looks like the perfect place to film a zombie movie.  The government in San Bernardino is about as liberal left as they can get, and the political attitude towards guns rivals that of the State officials in Sacramento.  Everybody knows that Riverside County to the south, which is very conservative compared to the rest of Southern California, is the better place to apply for a concealed-carry permit.  It's just about impossible to get one in San Bernardino County.

Inland Center is the last place in San Bernardino that seems to have any life to it, and that is the zone where today's shooting took place.  14 dead, 17 injured is the tally at this point.

The Inland Regional Center is a resource center for the disabled, and a location for a number of county employees, about a mile and a half from the Inland Center Mall where shoppers today were swarming the local stores for the best Christmas deals.  The sound of gunfire rocked the region, and the shooting that began at the Inland Regional Center quickly moved into a neighborhood where the police searched homes while trying to track down the assailants.  A name of a suspect, not yet released, led police to Redlands where they found an SUV at a home.  The suspects fled.  During the chase, and the final rundown in San Bernardino County, a male and female were killed while attempting to escape in the dark-colored SUV, and a third person was being sought, and now has been detained.

Liberal Left Democrats hope that the shooter is an NRA or Tea Party member so that they can politicize it, Conservatives hope the person is not a right-leaning individual so that the leftists don't politicize the shooting, and Muslims are excited about the mayhem and are celebrating the death of infidels, even if not by their own hands (though Muslims have not been removed from the list of possibilities).  The FBI says they are not ruling out terrorism, and in fact the police suggest it might be the case.

An explosive device has been discovered, with possibly more in the facility and in the SUV, which suggests that it is entirely possible that this was a terror attack.  The shooters, it is being said, were dressed in military tactical style gear, which also tells us that it was a pre-planned, carefully carried out operation.

However, there are also stories that there was a dispute at the Christmas party where the shooting began, which would make one consider the possibility of it being a spontaneous event.

While President Obama says this is a "...pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world," (an obvious attempt to use this for his gun control agenda) the reality is that this is a common occurrence in Muslim countries, and of late a common theme in Europe (i.e. Paris).

The collective ideology of three people planning and carrying out a mass-shooting at a location where they scoped out the location and knew there would be a large collection of people leads me to believe this is terrorism.  Who are the terrorists?  Are they Islamic?  Until more facts emerge, we really don't know that, yet.

Pre-meditation, however, seems to be very likely.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

14 Dead, 17 More Wounded In San Bernardino Shooting Attack - CBS Los Angeles

Dispute at a party may have sparked San Bernardino mass shooting that killed 14 - L.A. Times

ISIS adherents praise San Bernardino Massacre with #America_Burning - Vocativ