As one million people across the greater Boston area sat in lockdown while police searched for Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev earlier this month, 11 Americans were killed elsewhere in acts of gun violence. The majority of those killed remain faceless victims, part of the 10,000 killed each year in homicides involving firearms.
The Boston bombings represented a major attack, killing four, injuring roughly 200, and setting off a citywide search for the men responsible for the worst acts of terrorism on U.S. soil since the 9/11 attacks.
Many members of both the Republican and Democratic parties have called for increased government surveillance in the wake of the Boston bombings, but have blocked gun reforms that could keep guns out of the hands of criminals and mentally unstable individuals.
“We’ve got to up our game,” said Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), with regard to potential terrorists but not gun purchasers. “When one of these guys goes into the system and they leave the country we need to make sure where they’re going and interview them … The laws do not allow the FBI to follow up in a sound solid way.”
Statistically, gun violence far outstrips incidents of organized terrorism, yet modest, popular gun control reforms like universal background checks are routinely blocked in the U.S. Congress, bolstered by multimillion dollar lobbying by the National Rifle Association (NRA) and gun manufacturers.
Defining terrorism
“It is all about theater. There is a psychological aspect to it. A lot of my colleagues throw around the phrase that we ‘terrorize ourselves’ but I wouldn’t go that far,” John Horgan, director of the International Center for the Study of Terrorism, told Mint Press News.
According to the Global Terrorism Database, an open-source database maintained by the University of Maryland, there have been 2,362 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil from 1970-2011.
Although this is a large number, many of these attacks involve destruction of property and few fatalities. Incidents of terrorism on U.S. soil have declined sharply after 9/11, in many cases because the FBI and local police were able to stop suspects from carrying out attacks.
Some contend that the security apparatus requiring lockdowns of whole cities, full body scans at airports and increased police presence in public spaces is unwarranted given the declining threat.
Political scientists John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart write about the FBI reflections on the ineptitude of recent terrorists in their 2012 article, “The Terrorism Delusion: America’s Overwrought Response to September 11”:
“With remarkably few exceptions, the [FBI] agents describe their subjects with such words as incompetent, ineffective, unintelligent, idiotic, ignorant, inadequate, unorganized, misguided, muddled, amateurish, dopey, unrealistic, moronic, irrational and foolish.”
Citing this report, Stephen Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University, contends, “Using conservative assumptions and conventional risk-assessment methodology, the annual risk of dying in a domestic terrorist attack is about 1 in 3.5 million.”
Walt continues, saying that in order to justify the $1 trillion in increases in homeland security and defense spending, officials “would have had to deter, prevent, foil or protect against 333 very large attacks that would otherwise have been successful every year.” In reality, the public knows of just 50 incidents that were thwarted by the FBI since September 11.
More recently, Michael Cohen of the Guardian, commented on the shutdown of Boston saying, “Letting one fugitive terrorist shut down a major American city, Boston not only bowed to outsize and irrational fears, but sent a dangerous message to every would-be terrorist — if you want to wreak havoc in the United States, intimidate its population and disrupt public order, here’s your instruction booklet.”
Despite the relative infrequency of bombings in the U.S., some experts contend that the psychology of public fear surrounding very visible terrorist attacks may be the driving force behind the strong police response.
“A bombing is about choreographing media attention. … Saying that these bombs can go off anytime, anywhere. There is a sense of pervasive uncertainty, especially when there is the perception that there are foreigners, ‘dark forces’ pulling the strings,” Horgan said.
Labeling acts of violence
Labeling an event as an act of terrorism is a somewhat arbitrary demarcation usually given to those who have a broader political agenda against the U.S.
The Fort Hood shooting in November 2009 was carried out by Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 and injured 29 others at a military base in Texas. Despite having exchanged emails with known Al-Qaeda terrorists, Hasan, who is awaiting trial, was deemed a “mass murderer” instead of a terrorist.
“I think that labels carry a lot more weight than we assume,” Horgan said. “The issue for me is there has never been a definition of terrorism. We apply that very inconsistently. James Holmes who was responsible for the Aurora massacre had a different context for his activity. He was likely mentally ill and there was no broader ideological complex.”
Holmes opened fire at a crowded movie theater in July 2012, killing 12 people and injuring 58 others. He awaits trial but may be deemed mentally incompetent, having received extensive psychiatric treatment before the shooting.
“Many shooters suffer from mental illness, mental trauma and distant fantasy. You can almost assume that when there is a bombing, let alone a bombing in a public place, that it is almost guaranteed to be labeled as a terrorist act,” Horgan said.
Gun violence in the U.S.: a bigger threat to public safety?
Statistically, gun violence — whether carried out by a criminal or a deranged individual — far outstrips deaths from those acts labeled by authorities as terrorism. The vast majority of the 8,583 victims killed by an attacker using a firearm in 2011 remain faceless and nameless, part of a silent epidemic that some experts believe is a much larger problem than formal acts of terrorism, which claim 20 or fewer lives each year in the U.S.
“This is a big business that makes a lot of money that hires lots of lobbyists and it is very clearly economic self-interest. … This business, they would like to have as many terrorist acts as possible to continue the war, to have these bad guys always and for this business its very good that people to use guns,” Irakli Kakabadze, a conflict-resolution expert, told Mint Press News.
In 2012, gun manufacturers raked in $12 billion in revenue and nearly $1 billion in profits. These healthy profits came from the sale of roughly 6 million guns across the U.S. Overall, there are more than 300 million weapons held by citizens.
With a clear profit incentive to keep regulations as loose as possible, the National Rifle Association (NRA) has worked consistently to stop gun regulation, even when a majority of its membership supports universal background checks that would prevent former criminals and mentally unstable people from obtaining deadly weapons.
The NRA remains one of the most influential lobby groups in Washington, contributing more than $1.4 million in direct political contributions during the 2012 election cycle. This is in addition to the $2.9 million spent on lobbying over the same period.
“A lot of people with the National Rifle Association think they are protecting families; I think it is a mistake,” Kakabadze said.
During the week of the Boston bombings, the U.S. Senate blocked consideration of a gun control bill that would have strengthened background checks for potential buyers — a proposal supported by roughly 90 percent of Americans.
Even the majority of rank and file members of the NRA overwhelmingly support universal background checks. According to recent opinion polling published by the Houston Chronicle newspaper, 87 percent of NRA members say they believe enforcing Second Amendment rights coincides with keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals.
“One of the reasons for contemporary terrorism is because of a violent culture where we raise our kids; religion doesn’t have to do with anything. This is a religion in and of itself — the gun religion,” Kakabadze said. “The military-industrial complex and all industries associated with it, including the toy and show businesses and others, they have a lot of profit.”