Obama speaks from Oval Office

Sunday night President Barack Obama made a rare Oval Office address after the San Bernardino shootings that left 14 dead. In the 13 minute address Obama said that the killings were “an act of terrorism designed to kill innocent people.”

Obama promised an intensification of airstrikes against ISIL and said that a growing coalition of nations and an increasingly sophisticated effort to capture and kill the group’s leaders would yield significant results.

But the president’s speech was not intended to announce a dramatic shift in strategy or new policies to combat the terrorist threat at home and overseas. Instead it was meant to inform Americans of the administration’s efforts against the Islamic State and to urge people not to give in to fear or language that casts suspicion on all Muslims and mosques.

“We cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam,”  Obama said.

It was only the third speech Obama has delivered from the Oval Office, a setting meant to highlight the gravity of a subject.

San Bernardino shooting investigation continues

David Bowdich, FBI assistant director in charge of the investigation, said authorities believe that both shooters were “radicalized” but that so far there is no evidence that the killers were part of an international plot. Bowdich said there was evidence that the shooters — Syed Rizwan Farook, a restaurant inspector for county, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik — had practiced shooting at local ranges in recent days. Bowdich called the investigation “massive,” saying more than 400 interviews had been conducted and more than 300 pieces of evidence amassed.

“We believe that both were radicalized and had been for some time,” Bowdich said of the couple. He said it was not clear if one or the other had led the attack. Twelve of those killed in Wednesday’s attack were county employees, and only essential employees had worked since. Security will be stepped up at many county buildings, including the addition of armed guards at some locations. The sheriff’s department also was increasing surveillance, he said. Increasing security is a major task for a county with more than 20,000 employees and a population of more than 2 million people spread over 20,000 square miles.

Supreme Court will not hear ‘assault weapons ban’ case

The US Supreme Court has refused to take up a case brought by gun owners challenging an Illinois city’s ban on so-called assault weapons. The decision leaves in place a lower court ruling that allows local governments some leeway in regulating the high-powered weapons. Two conservative justices said that they would have heard the case, and had they done so, struck down the ban. The decision comes days after mass shootings in California and Colorado. The city of Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago, passed a law that bans semi-automatic weapons and large-capacity magazines in 2013. A federal appeals court upheld that law in a ruling that was challenged by an Illinois gun owners association. The high court has considered taking on the case for two months, and a delay in deciding whether to take it on seems to be because Justice Clarence Thomas was finishing his opinion. He and Justice Antonin Scalia said the federal appeals court’s ruling “flouts two of our Second Amendment precedents”. In the opinion, Thomas did not mention any mass shootings that involved semi-automatic weapons, and said the Chicago-area ban “is highly suspect because it broadly prohibits common semi-automatic firearms used for lawful purposes” by about five million US citizens. Similar laws in Connecticut and New York were upheld by a New York federal appeals court in October. In all, seven states plus Washington DC have passed laws that ban the weapons. Since two landmark rulings that ensured the right to own a handgun to defend one’s home, the Supreme Court has regularly turned away challenges to gun laws.