President Obama again avoided attributing the Orlando shooting to radical Islamic terrorism Monday, saying instead that it appeared to be motivated by “extremist information distributed over the Internet.”
He also talked about the Islamic State’s “perversion of Islam” on the Internet and once again partly blamed the availability of guns in the U.S. for the attack.
He said the mass shooting at a gay club overnight Sunday underscores the “risks we were taking by being so lax on firearms.”
While Obama said these sort of events tended to devolve into an “either-or” debate over gun control vs. terrorism, U.S. authorities are still looking at “all the possible motivations of the killer.”
Obama had just met with key members of his national security team, including FBI Director James Comey. Comey will hold a briefing at noon to discuss further details of the case.
