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President Obama to Visit With San Bernardino Shooting Victims' Families

President Obama will head to San Bernardino, Calif. on Friday for a private meeting with the families of a deadly terrorism-inspired shooting spree.
Image: Barack Obama, Ash Carter, Lloyd Austin
President Barack Obama speaks at the Pentagon, Monday, Dec. 14, 2015, about the fight against the Islamic State group following a National Security Council meeting. The president said the U.S. military and allied forces are hitting the Islamic State group harder than ever. Evan Vucci / AP
By Halimah Abdullah

President Obama will head to San Bernardino, Calif. on Friday for a private meeting with the families of a deadly terrorism-inspired shooting spree.

The president will stop in San Bernardino before continuing on to vacation in Hawaii.

In only his third address to the nation from the Oval Office, Obama earlier decried the Dec. 2nd mass shooting, when Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik opened fire at the Inland Regional Center, killing 14 people and wounding 21 more. The president, who has long criticized the nation's gun policy, has also sought to reassure Americans that the United States can meet the dangerous and "evolving" threat of terrorism.

Related: Obama to Nation: Terrorist Threat to U.S. Is 'Evolving' but Beatable

"As a father to two young daughters who are the most precious part of my life, I know that we see ourselves with friends and co-workers at a holiday party like the one in San Bernardino. I know we see our kids in the faces of the young people killed in Paris," Obama said in an address earlier this month.

The Inland Regional Center hopes to re-open some building on Jan. 4th, facility officials said in a statement. Other buildings will remain closed indefinitely.

Halimah Abdullah

Halimah Abdullah is a digital editor and writer for NBC News and is responsible for reporting, writing, editing and web producing federal policy news for NBCNews.com. Prior to joining the site in April 2015, Abdullah worked at CNN.com, where she reported, edited and web produced stories on federal politics and policy. In that role, Abdullah was responsible for helping cover Congress, the White House, federal agencies, and national political races.

A veteran politics and policy reporter and editor, Abdullah has worked for Bloomberg Government, McClatchy Newspapers' Washington Bureau, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, Newsday, and the Dallas Morning News. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times and TODAY.com, among other publications. Her journalism and creative writing have won awards, been published in several anthologies, and earned her invitations to attend several writing colonies. Abdullah is also a writing professor who has taught at the University of Maryland and the University of the District of Columbia and John Jay College and Brooklyn College in New York.

Abdullah lives in the Washington D.C. metro area.

Kristin Donnelly contributed.