“Long Past Time We Got A Hold Of Ourselves”: Why Do We Freak Out About Terrorism, Anyway? Here’s Why We Shouldn’t
There’s a new poll out today from the Public Religion Research Institute showing that nearly half of Americans say they’re either very worried or somewhat worried that they or a member of their family will be a victim of terrorism.
You might say that’s understandable, given how much terrorism has dominated the news recently. But the truth is, they’re wrong. On a national scale, terrorism isn’t a threat, it’s a nuisance. We’re having a collective freakout about it right now, and that freakout serves the interests of those who are encouraging it. But we need to take a step back and look at just how dangerous terrorism really is.
Here’s a question we all ought to ask ourselves: When it comes to terrorism, what exactly are we afraid of? I know it seems self-evident — terrorism is scary! — but what exactly is it? If you try to articulate an answer, you quickly realize how infrequently we actually ask the question.
The simplest answer, of course, is that we’re afraid that terrorists will kill people. Okay, so how many people? According to the New America Foundation, since 9/11 there have been 45 Americans killed in jihadist terrorist attacks, and 48 Americans killed in right-wing terrorist attacks. Let’s put aside for the moment the fact that even though these two numbers are comparable, we don’t treat right-wing terrorism as something that requires any kind of policy response or even sustained attention. But you can’t argue that jihadi terrorism is something to be concerned about and afraid of because of the damage it’s been doing. An average of about three people killed per year in a country of 320 million is next to nothing.
So if it’s not because terrorists have managed to kill a lot of people in the last few years, are we petrified of terrorism because terrorists could kill lots of people in the near future? That’s possible. But how many could they kill? Another dozen, like in the San Bernardino shooting? A hundred? Five hundred? Since September 11 we’ve made it much harder to pull off a large-scale, spectacular attack. Terrorists aren’t going to be able to hijack airplanes and use them as missiles. It’s possible that there could be repeats of the San Bernardino shootings, and that’s something to be concerned about. But we have mass shootings in America all the time. Why — again exactly — should we be more concerned about a repeat of San Bernardino than a repeat of Aurora, where nearly the same number of people (12) were killed?
Both were terrible, and both could happen again. But only in the case of San Bernardino does the event cause large portions of the public and elected officials to contemplate sweeping policy change, even up to and including the idea of starting another full-scale Middle East war because we’re so frightened. (Anytime there’s a mass shooting, Democrats push for gun control measures; but Republicans only call for a major policy response when it’s terrorism.)
There are some people who would argue that even if terrorists haven’t killed a lot of Americans lately, and even if it’s unlikely they’d be able to kill truly large numbers of Americans in the future, we still need to freak out about terrorism because a group like the Islamic State represents an “existential threat” to America. But if you get specific in the questions you ask, it becomes obvious that this idea is utterly deranged.
Back in the Cold War, the Soviet Union presented a true existential threat to the United States. It had enough nuclear missiles pointed at us to kill every man, woman, and child in America (and on the rest of the planet to boot). The Islamic State has no such capability. Is the Islamic State going to launch an invasion of the United States, sweep through the nation from Manhattan all the way to Seattle, take control of the whole country, and force America to live under its brutal rule? Of course not. Is it going to launch a coup from inside our government and raise its flag over the White House? No.
So what exactly is it we’re afraid the Islamic State will do to America? Right now I’m not talking about what it could do to Iraq or Syria, because that’s a very different question. What could it do to America? The absolute worst it could do is launch some successful attacks that might kill a dozen or even a hundred of us. And that would be awful. But about thirty Americans are murdered every day with guns, and a hundred die every day in car accidents. Eighty-three Americans die every day in falls, but we haven’t declared a “War on Falling,” and nobody tells pollsters that their biggest fear is that someone in their family will suffer a fatal fall.
If you actually force yourself to think in specific terms about the substance of the threat the Islamic State poses to us, you have to admit that the actual threat is miniscule. So why are we having a national freakout about it now? The answer, I think, lies in the presidential campaign, particularly in the Republican primary. You have a bunch of news organizations following around a bunch of candidates who know that the way to gain the support of their base is to prey on that base’s fears and prejudices. Add in the fact that the front-runner is a demagogic bigot, and you quickly get into a cycle of hysteria: a terrorist attack happens, it’s extensively covered in the media, the candidates seize on it to propose ever more radical policy changes (Keep out refugees! Put troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria! Keep out all the Muslims!) all the while proclaiming that the threat from terrorism is horrifyingly large and growing larger. The media report on their statements, voters get more nervous, and the candidates respond by feeding the panic.
Even outside their campaign coverage, the media give enormous attention to an event like San Bernardino, spending weeks analyzing not just the occurrence itself but who the perpetrators were, what motivated them, what they had for breakfast on the day of the attack, and everything else that can be uncovered. This coverage isn’t problematic in and of itself, but its sheer volume serves to reinforce the idea that terrorism is a huge threat that we all need to be terribly afraid of.
But it isn’t, and we don’t. We should be concerned, and we should take reasonable steps to minimize the risk we face from terrorism, just as we do with all the other risks we face. But right now we’re acting like a bunch of cowards. It’s long past time we got a hold of ourselves.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Plum Line Blog, December 10, 2015
“Death Comes From The Gun”: The Tragic Choice We Make About Guns
The common denominator in mass shootings is the use of firearms. Variables such as political ideology, religious fervor and mental illness are motivating factors, but death comes from the gun.
Until our society recognizes that simple truth, the list of place names to which Colorado Springs and San Bernardino were recently added will have no end.
I don’t know which is more obscene, the fact that deadly shooting rampages have become almost routine or the way we so quickly seek to make each incident follow a familiar script.
This process played out Wednesday after 14 victims were gunned down in San Bernardino, Calif. Quickly the speculation began. The carnage happened at an agency that worked with the developmentally disabled — not the kind of public place that terrorists generally choose for attacks. One of the alleged assailants worked for the county health department, which was having a holiday party there, so maybe this was a “disgruntled employee” story line. But there were two shooters, which would be weird in a workplace dispute. And they had Muslim-sounding names. And one of them was described as religiously “devout,” a word often used to imply saintliness in Christians and fanaticism in Muslims. So maybe it was terrorism after all.
But it turns out that one of the alleged shooters was a woman. And that the couple was man and wife. And that before the shooting, they casually dropped their infant off with Grandma, saying they had a doctor’s appointment. Is that what you do when you’re about to kill a bunch of people and then die in a Bonnie-and-Clyde-style shootout with police?
As of this writing, the San Bernardino massacre does not yet conform to one of the politically convenient templates. We’ll make it fit eventually, though. If the motive is deemed to have anything to do with religion, the far right will be able to rail about putting mosques under surveillance and giving the National Security Agency carte blanche to snoop into Americans’ lives. If an office-related grudge was the cause, we can all spend a couple of weeks bemoaning the inadequacy of mental-health services in this country, then do nothing about it.
In the case of the Planned Parenthood mass shooting in Colorado Springs, by contrast, we’ve already retreated to our ideological corners. The accused killer reportedly told police “no more baby parts,” so he must have been inspired by incendiary antiabortion rhetoric. Or else political speech had nothing to do with the atrocity, since the man is clearly deranged.
The truth is surely “all of the above.” What balanced, well-adjusted person is capable of mass murder?
After every incident, someone launches the mental-health discussion but it goes nowhere. Is Congress going to approve some sort of massive new program of screening and treatment? Is the nation ever going back to the days of involuntary commitment? No and no.
Likewise, we can argue to no end about political or religious motivations. I do fear that Muslims will become even more stigmatized, but the Constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom is absolute. Similarly, I deplore extreme political rhetoric that might inspire the vulnerable to commit violence — but the truth is that I probably deplore it more if it’s rhetoric I disagree with.
What we ought to do is stick to the facts, and the facts of these mass shootings are the guns.
More than 30,000 people are killed by firearms in this country each year. We are riveted when the victims number in double digits or hostages are taken or the venue is a place such as Planned Parenthood or Sandy Hook Elementary School, but these killing sprees are but a drop in the bucket of blood.
About two-thirds of deaths by gunshot are suicides. (Cue the mental-health discussion.) How many of these people would find other ways to kill themselves if a gun were not at hand? Some, surely, but not all.
Most of the remaining gun deaths are homicides. Other countries have people with mental illness and disgruntled employees and jihadist preachers and political fanatics of every stripe, but no other developed nation has a body count remotely this high. The only difference is that, in the United States, virtually anyone can amass an arsenal of handguns and assault rifles.
As long as there are as many guns in this country as there are people, as long as we don’t meaningfully restrict firearm purchases or keep track of weapons, we will have mass shootings and individual killings and gun suicides. Tragically, this is the choice we make.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 3, 2015
“Prayers Are Not Enough”: Your ‘Prayers’ Should Be For Forgiveness If You Do Nothing – Again
In October, following a deadly mass shooting in Oregon, a visibly angry President Obama delivered a message from the White House: “[T]houghts and prayers are not enough. It’s not enough. It does not capture the heartache and grief and anger that we should feel. And it does nothing to prevent this carnage from being inflicted someplace else in America, next week or a couple of months from now.”
Two months and one day later, an even deadlier mass shooting unfolded in Southern California, prompting Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) to take the president’s sentiment about “thoughts and prayers” a little further. “Your ‘thoughts’ should be about steps to take to stop this carnage,” the senator said on Twitter. “Your ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness if you do nothing – again.”
Whether Murphy intended to cause a stir or not, his message sparked some criticism. The Hill published a piece under the headline, “Dem senator criticizes post-shooting ‘prayers.’”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) says people who pray for the victims of shootings should be asking for forgiveness for their inaction. […]
Murphy drew criticism from users on Twitter who said his remarks were “offensive” and demeaning toward religious people.
I think this badly misses the point of an important sentiment. Murphy can certainly speak for himself, but the “prayers are not enough” argument generally has nothing to do with criticizing prayer or those who worship. It has everything to do with the idea that extending thoughts and prayers should be the start, not the end, of a constructive conversation about reducing gun violence.
In other words, when politicians – officials who can take steps to save lives through effective policymaking – offer thoughts and prayers after mass shootings, it’s fine, but it’s also inadequate. The sentiment warrants a follow-up question: “The thoughts and prayers are appreciated, but what’s next?”
If the answer is, “We’ll offer more thoughts and prayers after the next mass shooting,” the response isn’t enough.
The New Republic’s Elizabeth Bruenig made an interesting observation yesterday when highlighting Twitter responses to the San Bernardino shooting from the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates.
If you’re keeping score, that’s prayers, luck, and blessings from Republicans, and gun policy prescriptions from Democrats. One hundred and forty characters isn’t much, to be fair, but I can think of at least one way to split the difference: praying for the strength and wisdom to fix our heinously broken gun policy, for starters.
And that’s ultimately what this is about. I haven’t seen any politicians or public officials suggest people shouldn’t extend thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families, but there seems to be some disagreement over what should follow the well-wishes.
For their part, congressional Democrats have vowed to continue pushing policy measures intended to curtail gun violence and congressional Republicans will very likely continue to reject those proposals reflexively, just as they did this week.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 5, 2015
“We’re Ignoring The Real Gun Problem”: Exactly Which Forms Of Gun Violence Do Republicans Support?
Today President Obama spoke briefly to the press about yesterday’s mass shooting in San Bernardino, and he began by noting: “So many Americans sometimes feel as if there’s nothing we can do about it.” But what’s the “it” we’re talking about here? Is it just our spectacular and never-ending run of mass shootings?
Because if it is, we’re on the lesser of our gun problems. I’ll explain why in a moment, but here’s a bit more of what Obama had to say:
“It’s going to be important for all of us, including our legislatures, to see what we can do to make sure that when individuals decide that they want to do somebody harm, we’re making it a little harder for them to do it, because right now it’s just too easy. And we’re going to have to, I think, search ourselves as a society to make sure that we can take basic steps that would make it harder — not impossible, but harder — for individuals to get access to weapons.”
His mention of “legislatures” is an implicit acknowledgement that any movement that happens on gun laws will happen at the state and local level, because congressional Republicans are emphatically against any legislation that would even inconvenience, let alone restrict, anyone’s ability to buy as many guns of as many types as they want. But what are those “basic steps” we can take, and would they actually work? And which kinds of gun violence would they stop?
It’s not surprising that we focus on mass shootings, because they’re sudden and dramatic — the very fact that they’re unusual compared to ordinary shootings is why they’re newsworthy. That’s despite the fact that we have them so often that the victim count has to get pretty high before the national news pays attention. But as this blog has noted before, they’re actually the smaller part of our gun violence problem.
Using the now-common definition of a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are injured or killed, there were 351 mass shootings in the United States this year before San Bernardino, or more than one per day. In those shootings, a total of 447 people died and 1,292 people were injured.
Now let’s use a year for which we have complete data on gun violence, 2013. That year, there were 363 mass shootings resulting in 502 deaths. But overall, 33,636 Americans died from gun violence that year. The number of gun homicides was 11,208. That means that victims of mass shootings made up 1.5 percent of all gun victims and 4.5 percent of gun homicide victims.
Democrats advocating for gun restrictions take the opportunity when there’s a mass shooting dominating the news to say: “This is why we need these restrictions.” Which is understandable as far as it goes, but it still keeps attention on the smaller part of the problem.
Republicans and conservatives, on the other hand, see mass shootings as regrettable but say that any government action to restrict access to guns either won’t stop such shootings, or would represent an unacceptable trade-off in terms of surrendering liberty. Some will instead say, “we need to reform the mental health system. ” But nine out of ten GOP congressmen probably couldn’t tell you a single thing they’d do to reform it, let alone how whatever they support would actually reduce the yearly death toll. There are a couple of related bills in Congress that Republicans support to make some reforms to the mental health system, but they could actually wind up making it easier for some people with a history of mental illness to get firearms.
And of course Republicans don’t address this simple fact: the overwhelming majority of gun homicides in America are not committed by people who have been declared mentally ill. They happen when abusive men kill their spouses or partners, when an argument between neighbors gets out of hand, when an angry ex-employee shoots his boss, when cycles of revenge spiral onward.
But if we only try to talk about guns when there are mass shootings, it allows Republicans to say, “It’s not about the guns — this guy was just crazy!” (Never mind that there are people with mental illness everywhere in the world; only here is it so easy for them to arm themselves to the teeth.)
If Republicans (and I’d put special focus on the presidential candidates, since they’re the ones who can get the most attention) are going to argue that the answer to gun violence is mental health reforms, they ought to be forced to get specific. Exactly which forms do they support? How exactly will each of those forms reduce gun violence? Will any of their ideas do anything to help the 95 percent of gun homicide victims who don’t die in mass shootings?
We’re now getting reports that Syed Farook, one of the shooters in San Bernardino, may have been in touch with an international terrorism suspect, and so this shooting may have been politically motivated (even though he chose to target his co-workers). Had that not been the case, Republicans would have said that all that matters is that Farook was crazy — how could anyone who killed 14 people not be? Now they’ll say that all that matters is that he was a terrorist. But if that turns out to be true, it would bring the number of Americans killed at home in jihadist attacks since 9/11 to 45. That’s about the number of Americans murdered with guns in an average day and half.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, December 3, 2015
“And Why Does It Matter?: Why Are We So Obsessed With The Race And Religion Of Mass Killers?
For a few hours on Twitter and cable news on Wednesday night, there was a restless anticipation, as if everybody with a chyron or two thumbs was waiting at some imaginary line on a virtual track, waiting for the starting pistol.
A few hours earlier, everybody knew, two or three heavily armed people had shot up a center that helps disabled children in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people and wounding 17 before escaping. The updates started trickling in: Police had surrounded a bullet-ridden black SUV; one person from the car was on the ground, motionless; one male and female suspect wearing “assault-style clothing” were dead, and a third possible suspect had been arrested after fleeing from the scene of the massacre. Politicians were tweeting out calls for gun control (Democrats) and “thoughts and prayers” for the victims (Republicans, mostly).
People were worried about the victims. Were they children with disabilities? Social workers dedicated to helping them live meaningful lives? People from the Department of Public Health trying to enjoy a holiday party at the facility?
But the real question on everyone’s mind was this: Were the killers white people, Muslims, or something else? Lots of talking heads were tiptoeing around that question, but Bill O’Reilly just laid it out.
“We have to be careful here,” O’Reilly told counterterrorism expert Aaron Cohen, a guest on Wednesday’s show. “Very, very careful. If it is a terrorist attack, generated by fanatical Muslims, it becomes an international Paris-type story, with implications for the president of the United States on down. So we don’t want to speculate.” That didn’t deter Cohen, who immediately responded: “My sources have also said that an Islamic name has been released. That is compounded by the fact that the attackers went to a specific place with tactical gear that would allow them to create maximum damage. I believe this is strongly linked to Islamic-motivated international terror.”
The obvious inference is that if the shooting turned out to be “just a local beef in San Bernardino,” as O’Reilly put it, it’s just another mass shooting in America. We play this game every time there is a mass shooting in America: If the assailant has a Muslim-sounding name, we react one way, and if he (it’s almost always a he) is white, we react another way.
Just think about that for a second. As you are undoubtedly aware, mass shootings are nothing new in the United States — there has been, on average, more than one a day this year, and Wednesday was no exception, with one person killed and three wounded in a mass shooting in Georgia. In 2015 alone, mass shootings — defined as four or more people shot — have left 462 people dead and 1,314 wounded.
Yet America’s foreign and domestic policy hinges to an insane degree on a killer’s name and religion.
If the murderer of 20 grade schoolers and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut, had been a Muslim from Nigeria, for example, do you doubt there would be thundering calls for eradicating Boko Haram? Instead, since he was a young white male, the U.S. essentially did nothing.
We don’t yet know what prompted Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, to allegedly murder 14 people, and unless they left a note or manifesto, we may never be sure. Law enforcement hasn’t ruled out terrorism, and maybe it will turn out they were radicalized at some mosque or on Twitter and wanted to become jihadis. But if somebody named, say, Robert Dear had crashed his own office Christmas party wearing “assault-style clothing” and murdered 14 of his colleagues or their guests, you can bet your pundit card nobody would be talking about international terrorism.
Motive does matter if we are serious about trying to address the cause and prevent future mass murders. But if it’s a Muslim terrorist, “we” seem to think that lets “us” off the hook. Mostly, we appear interested in which Twitter/TV battle we are supposed to engage in: Is this a “foreigner” problem we can fix with bombing other countries and sealing America’s borders, or a domestic problem we can tackle by enacting new gun legislation? If you disagree with either of those propositions, you can argue the other side.
More serious than this idiocy is the fact that one or two sociopaths can push America into foreign entanglements, if they have one specific type of last name and creed. Freedom of religion is a cornerstone of America’s social contract, as is presumption of innocence. We betray both with this Pavlovian grief bifurcation.
Soon after Wednesday’s shooting, BBC News reporter James Cook described the murder of 14 people in San Bernardino as “just another day in the United States of America. Another day of gunfire, panic, and fear.” That stings. But given America’s evolving reaction to the killings, we probably deserve worse.
By: Peter Weber, The Week, December 3, 2015
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