Assault Rifles Didn't Destroy the Twin Towers

If you were President Obama, and you were serious about keeping the U.S free from radical Muslims jihadists, how would you go about  it? Ban assault rifles? Ban radical Muslims from entering the country? I suggest if you ban assault rifles, and let radical Muslims in, you will fail to protect America.

What  has been constant in all the radical Muslim attacks in the U.S. to date?

1. On Dec. 2,  two Muslims, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik attacked a Christmas party in San Bernardino, Calif., using two  AR-15-type semiautomatic rifles. Malik pledged allegiance to the ISIL leader on Facebook. Farouk and Malik fired 65-75 bullets. So, would a law banning assault rifles have made a difference? Probably not.

According to federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) officers, both weapons -- though legally acquired - had been illegally modified under California law. One had been modified to enable it to fire in fully automatic mode; the other, to allow use of a large-capacity magazine

The two flouted laws against modification; would they have obeyed laws that prohibited acquiring?

Fourteen civilians were killed. Would the attack not have occurred if Farook and Malik had been unable to acquire AR-15s? Both were also armed with 9 mm. semi-automatic pistols, and pipe bombs --  some of which were placed at the scene.

2. On Feb. 26, 1993, a 1,300-pound truck bomb was detonated below the World Trade Center in New York City, with intent to send the North Tower crashing into the South Tower,  bringing both towers down and killing thousands of people.

Six people were killed and more than 1,000 injured. The attack was planned by a group of Muslim terrorists including Ramzi Yousef, Mahmud Abouhalima, Mohammad Salameh, Nidal A. Ayyad, Abdul Rahman Yasin and Ahmed Ajaj. They received financing from Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, Yousef's uncle.

3. On 9/11/2001, 19 Muslim terrorists used box cutters and four hijacked passenger airliners, which they flew into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon; 2,977 Americans were killed, over 6,000 injured.

4. On Nov. 5, 2009, Maj. Nidal Hasan, yelling "Allahu Akbar!" attacked U. S. soldiers at Ft. Hood Texas. Hasan was armed with a pistol, fitted with two laser sights. He murdered 13 and injured 32.

5. On April 15, 2013, Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev perpetrated the Boston Marathon massacre using two pressure-cooker bombs. In the subsequent shootout, 9 mm. pistols were used. Three spectators were killed at the scene; 264 were injured. Later two police officers were killed by pistol fire.

6. On July 16, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez attacked a recruiting center, and a U.S. Navy Reserve center in Chattanooga, Tenn., while armed with an  AK-47-style semi-automatic rifle and a 9mm handgun. A 12-gage shotgun was also recovered from his vehicle. Four marines and a sailor were killed; two others, injured.

7. On Nov. 4, Faisal Mohammad stabbed four people at the University of California Merced campus, using a hunting knife. In a handwritten manifesto, Mohammad, vowed “to cut someone’s head off," and wrote five reminders to "praise Allah!"

These are seven significant r terrorist attacks that I recall. I have refreshed my memory using Wikipedia. Only two of the seven involved assault rifles. All seven involved radical Muslim terrorists. When the president focuses on assault rifles and not on the radical Muslims perpetrating these atrocities mainly on our civilian population, he misidentifies the problem.

Of the 3,020 Americans murdered in these  seven terrorist attacks, only 19 were killed in two of those attacks with assault rifles.

For every one American killed in these attacks by assault rifles, 158 were killed with other weapons. At present, airlines used as weapons by the terrorists have killed 150 people for every one killed by an assault rifle. Is the solution to ban civilian airliners? Box cutters? Pressure cookers? Pipes? Hunting knives?

Mr. Obama, and those who blithely follow, tell the American people that we will vet the 50,000 Syrian refugees Mr. Obama wants to bring into this country to weed out the radical jihadists. Compare that with the Congressional testimony under oath of Assistant FBI Director Michael Steinbach:

 “The concern in Syria is that we don’t have systems in places on the ground to collect information to vet ... on those  individuals. ... You’re talking about a country that is a failed  state, that is -- does not have any infrastructure, so to speak. So all of the data sets -- the police, the intel services -- that normally you would go to seek information, don’t exist.”

So is admitting 50,000 unvetted Syrian Muslims an act of Christian charity, or a game of Russian Roulette? Clearly, banning assault weapons would have saved 19 lives. But it isn't a substitute for properly vetting Syrians, when polls tell us that as many as 25 percent of Muslims worldwide support jihad.

France bans assault weapons. Did that stop the Paris attacks? Does any sane individual really believe banning assault weapons in the U.S. will stop terrorists from getting them as long as our southern border -- 1,989 miles -- remains open? The Mexican gangs smuggle cocaine and heroin in by the tons. Is it harder to smuggle AR-15s?


Updatd Post: 12:00 am, Sat Jan 2, 2016.QCOnline
By John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2015
 John Donald O'Shea