The lawyer for the family of suspected San Bernardino, Calif., shooter Syed Rizwan Farook criticized President Obama’s handling of gun issues Friday afternoon.
“We can’t have this announcement by the president every time there’s an incident like this that we need to ban all guns. Those rights are important to us as Americans, we died for those rights. And they shouldn’t be denied,” David Chesley said.
He then launched into an elaborate defense of gun rights and the intelligence of buying bullets in bulk, after the recent discovery the Farook was storing thousands of rounds of ammunition.
“As a gun owner myself, I myself probably have 4,000 or 5,000 rounds of bullets that I keep at home. The reason why you buy them in bulk is because they’re cheaper that way,” Chesley said. “The government keeps on outlawing different types of bullets and different types of guns at different times. And then there will be shortages of bullets that will occur very commonly where Homeland Security will order 2 million of a certain kind of bullet and you can’t get that bullet.”
“Especially if you’re target shooting, it’s not uncommon to own 2,000, 3,000 rounds to have with you. When you can get them at a cheap price, you stock up,” Chesley continued.
He also expressed his disapproval with the media for assuming the San Bernardino shooters were linked with or at least supportive of the Islamic State. The FBI said Friday that Tashfeen Malik pledged allegiance through Facebook to the leader of the Islamic State just before she and her husband killed 14 people in their rampage at a government office building.
“From what I’ve read, all I’ve seen is that somebody looked at something on Facebook,” Chesley said. “I’ve checked out a Britney Spears post and I hate Britney Spears. It doesn’t mean you condone what you look at or read,” he said.
“There was another article I read that said that the FBI had investigated people who Syed Farook allegedly spoke to. But even those people that the FBI had investigated, nothing came up for any of those people, and this is the danger we’re getting into,” he added.
“I think you shouldn’t be making statements that there’s a connection to a terrorist group until there’s a solid link,” said another Farook family attorney, Mohammad Abuershaid.
