Describing the California shooting as a terrorist act, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton today sought to ramp up military action against the Islamic State - the dreaded terrorist organisation which claimed that the attackers were its supporters.
"What happened in San Bernardino was a terrorist act. Nobody is arguing with that," Clinton told ABC News in an interview, her first after the San Bernardino shooting that killed 14 people and injured 17 others.
"We have to up our game against terrorists abroad and at home and we have to take account of the fact that our gun laws and the easy access to those guns by people who shouldn't get them, mentally ill people, fugitives, felons
"....The Congress continuing to refuse to prohibit people on the no-fly list from getting guns, which include a lot of domestic and international terrorists, these are two parts of the same approach that I'm taking to make us safe," Clinton asserted.
She said the US should now turn its attention to the very sophisticated propagation of the IS.
"That's what we'll hear from the President, an intensification of the existing strategy and I think there's some additional steps we have to take," Clinton said.
"If you look at the story about this woman and maybe the man, too, who got radicalised, self-radicalised, we're going to need help from Facebook and from YouTube and from Twitter. They cannot permit the recruitment and the actual direction of attacks or the celebration of violence by this sophisticated Internet user," Clinton said.
Responding to a question, Clinton said the US is in conflict with the IS and there is need for a new update of military authorisation.
"What we want to do is make sure we have every tool at our disposal to, number one, destroy there would-be caliphate in Syria and in Iraq. Number two, do everything we can to dismantle this very effective virtual jihadist network that they are using on the Internet. And number three, do whatever is necessary to protect us here at home," Clinton said.
