Liberal commentators on the Orlando shootings are downplaying Islamic terrorism as a factor to concentrate instead on the need for gun control laws. Some are even blaming Christians! The reasoning is that no evidence has of yet turned up that ISIS planned and ordered the attacks from Syria. Therefore, this is a “lone wolf” act of domestic terrorism by an American who hated gays and could easily procure firearms.
But modern terrorism employs the technique of “leaderless resistance“; that is, decentralized terrorism. ISIS has sent out a call to attack the United States, specifically the state of Florida and killing gays. So an American Muslim took up the task. (And this is not the first time.) There is no need for central planning when you can summon terrorists scattered all over the world. What makes a person “ISIS” is pledging allegiance to the caliphate and operating in its name. That is exactly what Omar Mateen did. So this was, in fact, an ISIS attack.
UPDATE: Some of you commenters have chastized me that my “thoughts about the Orlando shootings” don’t say anything about sympathy for the victims. Of course I have sympathy for the victims! What happened to them is horrible and must never be tolerated. I thought I conveyed that in my original post about the shooting. My revulsion for this killing of gay people is why I am trying to think through how we might stop this sort of thing from happening again, which is the subject of this particular post.
Ironically, if there was no central planning from ISIS headquarters, this goes even worse for the liberal assumptions about peaceful Islam. This would mean the terrorism is coming not from abroad but from the local mosques and the American Muslims that our liberals are so solicitous about. That some of these Muslims in America are willing to do the bidding of ISIS is reason for even more concern.
What about the availability of guns? ISIS killed 137 people at that nightclub in Paris, under extremely strict French gun control laws. Yes, Mateen passed the prerequisite background checks to buy firearms. Should he have, having been the subject of several FBI terrorist investigations? But being accused of a crime should not be enough to take away a constitutional right. And yet, are background checks–which most gun rights advocates are fine with–done effectively, or is there room for improvement in keeping weapons out of the hands of bad guys?
Should private firms also be more careful about their own background checks? Mateen was employed by a company called G4, a security firm with contracts with the Department of Homeland Security, though his job was to guard a retirement community rather than guarding the homeland, as such. A colleague complained about his murderous ravings, but he kept his job. Shouldn’t a security company be more alert to all of the red flags being raised about one of their employees?
Are there ways of scrutinizing suspicious characters like Mateen without violating civil liberties that need to be protected for everyone? Or do you agree with Donald Trump that we are too worried about civil liberties when the first priority needs to be to protect the public? Do you see anything wrong with Trump’s idea about restricting immigration from countries with a history of terrorism?
Any ideas for how this massacre could have been prevented, in addition to arming everyone in the nightclub? What can be done to wage a war against terrorism when the terrorists are American citizens?
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