It’s never a good idea to jump to conclusions.

That seems like a rather silly thing to say in the days of instantaneous reaction. But a government official did tell CNN that the San Bernardino shooters had “overseas communications and associations” with terror suspects. The police say Syed Rizwan Farook was “radicalized” and had watched ISIS propaganda videos. We know he had an arsenal in his home, including a dozen pipe bombs, and left behind a remote-control explosive that was similar to the one used by the Boston bombers. The shooting seems to have something to do with Islamic extremists.

When that reality began to kick in, chatter in the liberal Twitterverse quickly turned from torturous efforts to steer motivations in a certain direction, to dismissing motivation altogether, to dressing down Christians for praying too much, to accusing the National Rifle Association and pro-gun Republicans of being complicit in 355 mass shootings (a concocted statistic used by many gun control advocates.)

Since neither of the shooters was known to the police nor had been tagged as a terror risk by the feds, there’s probably no amount of regulation (barring confiscation) that could have stopped them from engaging in this premeditated rampage. It’s debatable whether gun control efforts would reduce violence, anyway.

Read the article “Why the Planned Parenthood and San Bernardino Shootings are Not Alike” on thefederalist.com.