An unwavering focus on gun control in the wake of Wednesday’s shooting may leave the president in an uncomfortable and likely untenable position

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There is never a good time for a commander-in-chief to learn of a terrorist attack on the homeland, but confirmation that the FBI is investigating the mass shooting in San Bernardino as an act of terrorism and growing suspicion that at least one of the killers may have links to the Islamic State could hardly have come at a worse time politically for Barack Obama.



Just one week before Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 Americans at an office Christmas party in California, the president responded to mounting fear of terrorism with unusually forthright reassurance for Americans to “go about their usual activities” during the US holiday season.



“The combined resources of our military, our intelligence and our homeland security services are on the case,” said Obama in an address broadcast the day before Thanksgiving.



“While the threat of terrorism is a troubling reality of our age, we are both equipped to prevent attacks and we are resilient in the face of those who would try to do us harm.”

Though the White House address was couched with all the usual caveats about the need for constant vigilance, the president also went out of his way to stress there was “no specific and credible intelligence indicating a plot on the homeland”.



The message was a direct response to what Obama said were “understandable” fears about terrorism in the wake of the recent Paris shootings.



But it also came as he was facing unprecedented levels of criticism from political opponents about failing to take seriously the threat from Isis and those potentially inspired by its violent extremism.



Even French president Francois Hollande, who visited Washington three days prior to the address, had been urging the White House to step up its military action against Isis in Syria.



Despite Obama’s fears that the presence of American ground troops in another Islamic country will only help radical recruitment and heighten risks in the long term, this does now appear to be happening.



But news from defense secretary Ash Carter that an “expeditionary” force of special forces troops would soon be operating independently in Syria was released haphazardly and half-heartedly – leaving Obama vulnerable both to criticism that he was ignoring his own instincts to avoid entanglement and doing too little too late.



The president’s initial response to the shooting in San Bernardino has also been seized upon by Republicans as a sign that his unwillingness to label the threat from radical extremists as “Islamic” has created a dangerous blind spot.



In the immediate aftermath of Wednesday’s shooting, Obama focused exclusively on gun control as a policy response – suggesting the attack fitted into a “pattern of mass shootings in this country”.



By Thursday, after the identity of the attackers had become clear, the president acknowledged that terrorism was a possibility but still spoke mainly about the need to pass gun control legislation – even though it now looks possible that the assault rifles in the attack may have already been illegal under California law.



The White House insists that excessively easy access to deadly weapons presents a risk to Americans regardless of whose hands they are in, but for Republicans who are itching to make national security the defining feature of the 2016 presidential election, the optics of recent events are an easy target.



Already Texas senator Ted Cruz has doubled down on his efforts to suspend the US programme for refugees from Syria by demanding to know the immigration status of the attackers.



Leading Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has also taken a noticeably more hawkish line on the need for US intervention on Syria than the White House.



White House spokesman Josh Earnest was asked Friday if there had been a major intelligence failure in the California shooting and said: “At this point it’s far too early to reach that kind of conclusion,” whilst acknowledging how challenging it is to disrupt terrorist plots, particularly so-called lone wolf attacks.



However, if the San Bernardino attack does prove to have even distant links to Isis, public confidence will be undermined in both the intelligence community and Obama’s own leadership in the fight against the global terror. It seems likely the current White House will find its more cautious approach unsustainable in the face of pressure.