{"id":43274,"date":"2019-08-05T06:00:25","date_gmt":"2019-08-05T10:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=43274"},"modified":"2019-08-04T16:51:14","modified_gmt":"2019-08-04T20:51:14","slug":"the-new-terrorism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2019\/08\/the-new-terrorism\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Terrorism"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/305\/2019\/08\/patrickcrusius.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-43280\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/305\/2019\/08\/patrickcrusius.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"420\" height=\"235\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We have long been subject to the threat of Islamic terrorism, in which radical Muslims murder innocent people unconnected to their grievances in an effort to strike down and terrorize the infidels.\u00a0 Now we have become subject to another kind of terrorism, in which 20-something loners murder innocent people unconnected to their grievances.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thesun.co.uk\/news\/9650601\/el-paso-walmart-shooting-dayton-ohio-mass-shootings\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Twelve hours<\/a> after a young man shot up an El Paso Wal-Mart, killing 20 and wounding 26, another young man opened fire in a Dayton, Ohio, entertainment district, killing 9 and wounding 27.\u00a0 Less than a week earlier, a gunman killed 3 and injured 12 at a Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California.<\/p>\n<div id=\"premium-content\">\n<p>This year so far there have reportedly been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/nation\/2019\/08\/03\/el-paso-walmart-shooting-250th-mass-shooting-this-year\/1913486001\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">251 mass shootings<\/a>\u2013another count gives\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/qz.com\/1681082\/the-292-mass-shootings-in-the-us-so-far-this-year-mapped\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">292<\/a>\u2013defined as incidents in which four or more people were killed.\u00a0 They have left 520 dead and more than 2,000 wounded.<\/p>\n<p>Some of those are surely gang battles and drug deals gone wrong, but some are ideology-driven.\u00a0 The El Paso shooter\u2013who was captured alive, unlike the other two\u2013railed against Mexican immigrants shortly before his killing spree, though only <a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffpost.com\/entry\/el-paso-walmart-shooting-victims_n_5d46d23ae4b0ca604e337863?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJ9FoyIW_AtnTnkgjDJWv7JchZ7rAjTOmKMST7h2Rh67gPut_MHGVKzSBWQG9RydVCB6dt2IgSwBTW9XkzQok7m67uzhoYqdQCdCz7HQyKcTwbKb0AwdiJVJeGgJ7Zre-wk3xjs0G1e5CLbZYEoJ0Y0LUvcUh2utW0JKe12SamKq\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">three<\/a> of his victims were Mexicans.\u00a0 \u00a0The California murderer was a fan of the book <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Might_Is_Right\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Might Makes Right, or Survival of the Fittest<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>which would make him a Nietzschean and a Social Darwinist.<\/p>\n<p>So what can we call these attacks, other than terrorism?<\/p>\n<p>The perpetrators are hitting \u201csoft targets\u201d\u2013schools, churches, shopping centers, and other places where there are crowds but little formal security\u2013which is the terrorist tactic advocated by al Qaida and ISIS.<\/p>\n<p>What would a war on terrorism against these American terrorists look like?<\/p>\n<p>The left, of course, is blaming the Second Amendment and Donald Trump.\u00a0 Maybe toning down our polarizing political rhetoric would help, but Trump is not solely to blame for that.\u00a0 Banning guns altogether violates our Bill of Rights, and determined killers can always find a weapon, illegal though it might be. The right calls for more concealed carry in the hopes than an armed bystander could shoot the killers and stop the rampage.\u00a0 Actually, the Dayton shooter was killed by a police officer <em>less than a minute<\/em> after he started firing, but in those few seconds he already managed to kill 9 people and wound 27!<\/p>\n<p>So the conventional responses from both sides seem unable to keep these crimes from happening.\u00a0 Would anything?<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t these killings represent a breakdown in social order?\u00a0 Today even many conservatives seem to be running away from the classic conservative cause of Law and Order.\u00a0 Don\u2019t we need to preserve that as a prerequisite for any other social projects?<\/p>\n<p>What is it about the state of the young adults who seem to be committing most of these crimes?\u00a0 Why are they so angry?\u00a0 Why do they seem to lack human connections?\u00a0 Do they basically live in the internet?\u00a0 Why don\u2019t they have normal human feelings of empathy and compassion?\u00a0 How has their schooling, entertainment consumption, family situations, and \u201cculture\u201d messed them up so badly?\u00a0 Is there any way to get through to people like this?\u00a0 What kind of deterrence might stop them from living out their murderous fantasies?<\/p>\n<p>Yes, we must preserve moral agency and civil liberties.\u00a0 We can\u2019t identify a person as a possible mass shooter, then punish him before he has done anything.\u00a0 Yes, such violence is still rare in the vast scheme of things.\u00a0 But this is getting ridiculous.<\/p>\n<p>How might we address it?<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>Photo:\u00a0 El Paso shooter Patrick Crusius, mugshot<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We have long been subject to the threat of Islamic terrorism, in which radical Muslims murder innocent people unconnected to their grievances in an effort to strike down and terrorize the infidels.\u00a0 Now we have become subject to another kind of terrorism, in which 20-something loners murder innocent people unconnected to their grievances. Twelve hours [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":43280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[600,46],"tags":[8594,5789],"class_list":["post-43274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-terrorism","tag-domestic-terrorism","tag-mass-shootings"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The New Terrorism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The shootings in El Paso, Dayton, and Gilroy are part of a wave of what can only be described as terrorism. Not Islamic terrorism, but a terrorism perpetrated by disaffected Americans in their 20s. 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