MISSING THE POINT IN ORLANDO

President Obama’s speech on the tragedy in Orlando included the following statement: “And I’ve directed [the FBI] that we must spare no effort to determine what -- if any -- inspiration or association this killer may have had with terrorist groups.”[1] I propose to save the FBI a tremendous amount of effort by pointing out the obvious:

[A]. ISIS has called for lone wolf terror attacks on the US during Ramadan.[2]

[B]. June 5, 2016 to July 5, 2016 is Ramadan.

[C]. Omar Mateen called 911 and pledged allegiance to ISIS before shooting up the Pulse Club. 

Points [A], [B], and [C] lead inescapably to the conclusion:

[D]. Omar Mateen was inspired by ISIS to commit this terrorist act.

Not once during his speech did President Obama mention ISIS or its call for lone wolf attacks during Ramadan. Instead he focused on gun control. Is he blind? The problem with people like Omar Mateen is not gun control, it’s radical control. 

Omar Mateen was obviously dedicated to the proposition that he was going to take out as many people as he could, and he didn’t care if he died in the process. He didn’t need a gun. How, you might ask, could he have killed so many people if he had no guns? HINT: Timothy McVeigh didn’t need a gun. Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev didn’t need guns. Countless numbers of Middle Eastern suicide bombers haven’t needed guns. 

Our Federal government has displayed a remarkable ability to spend untold billions of dollars implementing the wrong solutions for various problems, and I believe that running willy-nilly around the landscape disarming people is the wrong solution for people like Omar Mateen, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Eliminating ISIS would be a good start on solving the problem, and for most of the folks in the Middle East, that would be a welcome solution. But first we have to recognize that groups like ISIS are the problem.

POSTSCRIPT: The President did say one thing that I fully agree with. "[A]ttacks on any American -- regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation -- is an attack on all of us and on the fundamental values of equality and dignity that define us as a country."