The craziness continues

A deeply religious follower of Islam and his wife slaughtered 14 people and wounded 21 on Wednesday in San Bernardino, California and law enforcement says they left no calling card behind that would have made anyone suspicious of them.

Syed Rizwan Farook was born in Illinois, raised in California and was said to have been liked by all those who knew him. He loved snowboarding and fixing up cars. He was also a solemn Muslim who prayed five times a day and described his faith on online dating sites where he allegedly met his wife as "always fearing Allah."

When police went to the suspect's home after they were killed in a shoot-out, officer's found a huge arsenal of weapons, ammunition and explosive devices. So this attack had obviously been planned in advance and well thought out by the assailants.

But they left no traces of being radicalized behind. Farook appeared to like his work, inspecting restaurants and swimming pools in San Bernardino County for health code violations and also the people he worked with. He never had a negative confrontation with any of his co-workers and he was described by them as quiet and easy to get along with. So this obviously wasn't a workplace-violence incident as some people initially believed.

Farook did journey to Saudi Arabia last year and the only two things he changed upon his return, according to the Washington Post, was that he started growing a long beard and he married a woman he had met online on a dating site. It was his wife who was his co-assailant in this massacre and it's extremely rare for a woman to participate in an attack like this at this level.

The FBI will most likely put together a complete background package on the man and his wife that will indicate both their personalities and their plans but that will be after the fact. There was practically nothing to suggest they would do what they did beforehand and that worries law enforcement more than anything else because they have to have some idea who the offenders might be before they act or they have no chance of preventing the behavior.

We can't surveil all Muslim men who start growing beards, nor can we follow all Muslim couples who meet on a dating site. He also had told some friends that he didn't want to live in the United States anymore but that wouldn't raise a red flag either. Evidently no one outside their religion knew of the weapons cache they had accumulated at home. And why did Farook shoot, kill and injure his friends and co-workers instead of people he didn't know? The answer seems to be chillingly simple; it was the easiest thing to do. He knew all the employees gathered at the Health Department each morning to receive their assignments before they went out in the field and that would be the time to inflict the most damage. So that's what he and his wife did after they dropped their six-month old daughter off at his mother's house, telling her that they had a doctor's appointment.

This incident raises the fear level of Americans all across the country because nobody saw it coming. In most all of the previous mass shootings in this country, it was obvious the shooter was psychologically out of step with those around him but that doesn't apply to this situation. Except for being devoutly religious, he didn't seem unlike anybody else.

Right up until the second that he opened fire!