A couple of weeks ago, many of my fellow Americans were arguing Syrian refugees shouldn't be allowed into our country because they might be terrorists.
Based on events since that hubbub, I doubt any of the "what ifs" amongst the refugees could hold a stick to our own home grown models. In November there were 35 mass shootings in the United States.
Exactly all of them were committed by American citizens.
For those of you wondering, a mass shooting is when at least 4 people are shot. So 35 times in November at least 4 people were shot in one incident. As of December 2, that number is 355 times for the year. That's more than one mass shooting per day.
Some might consider that terrifying.
There have been 447 killed and 1292 injured in mass shootings this year in the United States. Exactly none of the attacks were perpetrated by Syrian refugees.
In reality, most of the attackers looked more like the guy in the picture at the top of this column. Without the movie star good looks, of course.
Wednesday's tragedy in California appears, as of the very late hour I'm pounding this out, to be another case of disgruntled and delusional employee gone bonkers. A native born American with automatic weapons and a chip on his shoulder. His religion or ethnicity were secondary to his insanity.
It's hard to pinpoint why this keeps happening. There might be a clue in the argument made by a Texas congressman to keep the earlier mentioned Syrian refugees out of the country. And I quote: "It'll be too easy for those people to get guns."
You know it's better to keep people in need out of our country than to make it harder for anyone to get an AK47. Nobody ever lost an election for that. 90% of Americans might be for background checks for all gun sales, but the NRA isn't. He doesn't need your vote, he needs their money.
Just making it harder for certain people to get guns isn't the whole answer. We have a whole country of paranoid, crazy people and a whole branch of the media hellbent on maximizing the crazy. It's easy to argue certain media outlets fan the delusion into action. Last Friday's Planned Parenthood attack that left a police officer, an Iraq War veteran, and a mother dead is a prime example.
After watching the coverage of the San Bernadino incident on various 24 hour "news" channels, I'm more sure than ever most of the terror being perpetrated in our country is ginned up by endless speculation. They were all far more interested in concocting an ISIS/ISIL connection than giving any coherent coverage of the facts on the ground.
The terrorists aren't coming, they're here. They're on Fox and CNN. They're elected officials and heads of special interest groups.
So let's make it harder for those people to get guns. Let's make it easier for those people to get the mental healthcare they need. Let's make it harder for speculation and innuendo to be presented as news. Let's make it easier to get rid of elected officials who serve special interest groups over the public.
Doing nothing is really the most terrifying thing I can imagine.