A husband and wife were killed in a shootout with the police in San Bernardino, Calif., after the couple had attacked a state office building killing 14 people and wounding 17.

The two shooters were identified as Syed Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27. Police say they lived in an apartment in Redlands, Calif. with Farook’s mother and their 6-month old daughter. The two met online and Farook travelled to Saudi Arabia to meet his new wife.

Witnesses to the pre-noon assault described attackers with assault rifles and dressed in combat clothing.

Police say Farook, who was born in Illinois to parents from Pakistan, attended a holiday party for the San Bernardino County Public Health Department, where he was an environmental inspector. But Farook was said to have left the party angry about something. He returned with his wife, both dressed in tactical gear and firing assault rifles.

Three explosive devices were found later in the building and detonated. The ATF says the guns used were legally obtained. Early reports that there were three gunmen proved to be wrong.

Police are still sorting out what happened and why. Farook’s brother in law said, ““I have no idea why he would do that, why he would do something like this.”

The local sheriff said, “Based upon what we have seen, and based upon how they were equipped, there had to be some degree of planning that went into this. I don’t think they just ran home, put on some tactical clothes, grabbed guns and came back on a spur of the moment thing.”

Santa Sighting: Mass shootings like yesterday’s tend to spur gun sales. Last Friday … so-called “Black Friday” for shopping madness … the National Instant Criminal Background Check System ran a record 185,345 background checks, about two per second.

That coincided with the killing of three people and a standoff at the Planned Parenthood office in Colorado Springs.

Nothing says Christmas like an autoloader under the tree.

Permawar: The US is sending a special operations team to Iraq to carry out attacks on Islamic State targets. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter described the team from the Joint Special Operations Command in an understatement as a “specialized expeditionary targeting force.” They are some of the US military’s most highly trained and capable killers. Their presence in Iraq could signal a major ground-based escalation of American involvement in the war.

>In other war news, Britain’s Parliament has voted to extend its aerial bombing campaign to ISIS targets in Syria in response to the Paris terror attacks.

Blade Runner: An appeals court in South Africa has found the double-amputee runner Oscar Pistorius guilty of murder in the 2013 killing of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, overturning a previous conviction of manslaughter. Pistorius is living under house arrest after serving a year in prison, but he will be re-sentenced. The murder conviction carries a minimum of 15 years.

Small Screen: Too much television early in life can make your brain a little mushy, according to a new study of 3,000 people over 25 years.

People who watched more than three hours of television a day as young adults were twice as likely to poor cognition later in life, the study says.

Sex Change: Social change takes a while to break into the newspaper style books. “Ms.,” used to designate a woman without revealing her marital status, was around for years before it entered official usage. Now in a reflection of what’s going on out there in the world of sexual identification, the Washington Post will allow its reporters to use the pronoun “they” instead of “he” or “she” to refer to people who identify as neither male nor female. Earlier this week the NY Times used “Mx.” (pronounced “mix”) for reference to a woman … oops, person, … who didn’t want to be sexually identified even though they first name is Senia.

Suffice it to say, sexual identification is getting pretty mxd up.

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