President Obama again avoided attributing the Orlando mass 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 that killed 50 people, including the killer. Fifty-three others were injured, five of whom are in grave condition, according to the Associated Press.
He said the mass shooting at a gay club in Orlando Sunday morning underscores the “risks we were taking by being so lax on firearms.”
“With respect to the killer, it is important to emphasize that we are still at the preliminary stages of the investigation,” he said.
“The one thing that we can say is that this is being treated as a terrorist investigation. It appears that the shooter was inspired by various extremist information that was disseminated over the Internet.”
Drawing a similarity to the terrorist attack in San Bernardino in December, the president made the point that the shooter, at the last minute, expressed allegiance to the Islamic State but that the attack didn’t appear to be part of a broader ISIS plot.
At this point, he said, “we see no clear evidence that he was directed externally…[or] that he was part of a larger plot.”
“As far as we can tell right now this is certainly an example of kind of homegrown extremism that all of us have been so concerned about for a very long time,” he said.
Because Mateen appears to have been radicalized over the Internet, Obama said it is important that even as “we go after” ISIS and “hit their leadership” and infrastructure that the U.S. and others also target the group’s online propaganda arm.
“The biggest challenge we’re going to have is this kind of propaganda of Islam that you see generated on the Internet,” he said.
Obama also noted that the shooter, Omar Mateen, acquired his weapons, an assault rifle and a Glock handgun, legally.
“It was not difficult to obtain these types of weapons,” he said.
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.
