Mass Shooting At Black Church In South Carolina

[Joun_Lord]

The problem is, if you decide to not carry one on the grounds that you probably won't need one... well, someone like this can show up and easily make you into one of his many, many casualty statistics.

The thing is mass shootings are actually pretty rare. I think there have been like 70 in the past 30 years with aboot 500 killed. Thats alot, especially with the uptick recently, but it still means you are unlikely to get killed by some terroristic mass shooter motherfuckers.

Its like being worried about getting hit by meteorites, theres little chance you can predict or prevent the things from happening (save maybe not being in a gun free zone in regards to shootings). Theres of course more you can do compared to getting smacked by a space rock like carrying a weapon to defend yourself, but its like wearing a helmet to stop the space rocks. Its most likely never going to get used.

Now again, thats not me saying you shouldn't carry a weapon if you feel the need but most people don't feel the need. Honestly I can't blame them. Most people don't want to be victims of fear. Most people who even carry a weapon, from the super duper scary firearm to the equally scary knife if you're british, aren't a carrying to stop some irate nutbar trying to get a new high score but just to defend themselves personally from other dangerous threats that society throws at them.

Probably also the zombie apocalypse. There is a reason neon green zombie crap is so popular with the shooter crowd and its certainly not the butt ugly pain-job the shit has. Just blech, like someone threw up on an AR-15 and decided to sell it.

Except that there really aren't a lot of choices here. Turning society into an armed camp makes it harder for random murderers to make you a victim- but it increases the death rate from suicides and impulse killings. In a society where most people are unarmed, but a few people decide to be massively violent and have easy access to weapons, you get... this.

There is no easy solution really. One can either criminalize law abiding citizens and punish them for the actions of a few, which would go over very well both for the fact most people who aren't criminals don't want to be treated like criminals and the connotations that everyone is responsible for the actions of a few in their chosen fraternity. Have a disarmed population that cannot defend themselves from whatever threats, including goddamn zombies, might come their way but at the same time have a harder time preying on their fellow citizens. Treat people like children who can't be trusted to have something dangerous, that the government and others know what is best for them but less people blowing their brains out.

Or they can have a bunch of weapons and everyone from a 500 pound fat dude with tits bigger then a porn star, a 80 pound grandma, and a weak nerd or woman can defend themselves from muggers, rapists, criminal scum, attackers, rogue police especially if they are black, and the undead menace. But there are easier suicides (though I honestly don't think thats a completely bad thing, suicide is terrible but I'd rather someone push a button and die then swallow a bunch of pills, slit their wrists, walk out into traffic, try to hang themselves, or any of the other ways people try to die that can easily fail and make them a cripple or vegetable but I'll get more into the suicide thing later) and easier mass killings. People are more likely to just shoot a potential threat rather then retreating or trying to diffuse the situation. Improperly stored weapons are highly dangerous in the wrong hands. Combine firearms with America's other past-time, drinking, and we have a not nice combination.

Of course many of the ills of firearms are not really the fault of the firearm unless you are one them there fucknuggets of gooey stupid who think firearms are liek the one ring of power that warps peoples minds and whispers to them to go kill people. Its doesn't, except for the mentally ill. Which is why its good to disarm the mentally ill.........save for the fact the mentally ill are easily preyed upon by many and nearly as likely as our swarthy friends to be killed by some Barney Fife asshole with a gun and a badge.

But just disarming them fruitloop crazy people of their god given right to have murder machines of the bullet spewing kind (man spewing is such a nasty word, even typing it makes me feel dirty) while a good idea (so long as there is plenty of ways for them to get back their extended assault clip murder death kill devices after they are stable but as it stand now alteast in Murica if you get your guns taken away its nearly impossible to get that right returned to you) ignores WHY some fruitloop nutter felt like shooting up something. WHY aren't they able to get help? WHY is there such a stigma of mental illness in the US that even when someone has access to mental health services, which many do not thanks Obama.......I mean Reagan, they choose not to? WHY are so many civilians and veterans thinking that suicide is the best solution?

The WHY, that is the important question, even beyond insane in the membrane people who leave safety pins in the arms until the skin holding it in place rots enough to let the metal fall away like their pain.

WHY do people do the mass shootings? WHY are inner cities violent? WHY are so many people so desperate that robbing places and turning to crime is the only thing they can do? WHY does the McDonalds dollar menu only have like two things that are a dollar? WHY are people so afraid of cops that they need guns to defend themselves from the people that are supposed to be protecting them? WHY are people so afraid of other citizens raping, harraging, and attacking them?

If one can answer those questions and solve the problems related to them, gun violence wouldn't be a problem so much.

I look to a country like Switzerland, a country with pretty damn high gun ownership but very low violence. There are is a gun for every two people and thats only registered guns, there are supposed to be quite many guns that aren't registered, yet their gun violence is less then a third of what America's is.

Is it because they are a superior Euro-communist cuntry all superior in their Euro ways? Possibly but probably not. Some people like Mr Roof would say its because they are a bunch of white bread white people without waves of damn dirty immigrants stealing jobs there but thats bullshit because like a signifigant portion of the population there is dirty foreigners.

More likely its because its a very stable country with limited drug and poverty problems plus a healthy education system both in general and in regards to firearms safety.

The US on the other hand..........well we've got inner city ghettos and low income areas that would be more at home in some shitty 3rd would country. These areas got an economy that is shit, an education system that is shit, social safety net that is full of some many holes it might as well not exist, ooh and plenty of fucking racism and police that think they are still in downtown Kabul.

That is the WHY of it, not the guns. Gun violence is a SYMPTOM of the problems plaguing our streets, also roofs, maybe sidewalks too.

To just go after gun violence is only treating a symptom of the larger problem. Its akin to taking aspirin for a headache. A headache you got from being stabbed. Sure the headache is gone but the thing that created it still persists.

Some links.....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/won ... ed-states/

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... otings-map

http://www.ozy.com/acumen/switzerland-p ... guns/32578

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigrati ... ationality

[Broomstick]

Now again, thats not me saying you shouldn't carry a weapon if you feel the need but most people don't feel the need. Honestly I can't blame them. Most people don't want to be victims of fear. Most people who even carry a weapon, from the super duper scary firearm to the equally scary knife if you're british, aren't a carrying to stop some irate nutbar trying to get a new high score but just to defend themselves personally from other dangerous threats that society throws at them.

Speaking as an American who is legally able to carry a gun but does not ... honestly, the odds of any one particular person getting shot, outside a few very small locations, are pretty low. Clearly, it does happen but it's like getting hit by a tornado. Yes, there is a risk, but take reasonable precautions and most likely you won't get hit. I say that as someone who has lived in several cities that, at one time or another, were declared "murder capitals" in the country (St. Louis, Detroit, Chicago, and Gary, IN). There are more effective ways to reduce typical risk than arming yourself, although not all of those methods are equally easy or cheap.

I don't carry a gun because I don't feel a need to. I have considered a shotgun for home defense, but have not bought one. I used to carry a knife when I was much, much younger for "self defense" but the few times I was attacked while wearing it I wasn't able to draw and use it and wound up either running like hell or defending myself with bare fists. So what's the point of carrying a weapon you don't actually use? Sure, IF I can not run away IF there's something at hand and IF I can get it into play I'll use it (in this household we've used a crossbow, garden shovel, craft knife, car door, sgian dugh and a few other things as various self-defense items), but my (admittedly limited) experience has been that just having a weapon is not the same as using it. There's more to effective self defense than simply strapping a pistol onto your hip.

While a lot of Americans own guns, a lot of those gun owners aren't carrying them around daily (some use them only for hunting, some for target shooting, most don't feel so threatened they need to be constantly armed). There are also a lot of Americans who just don't own guns at all, for whatever reason. Most of us fear a random mugger or ex more than a spree killer, because spree killers are a fuck of a lot more rare than muggers and ex's.

[Ralin]

A number of things occur to me as I've watched this unfold: If this had been a Muslim this would've been referred to as a terrorist attack. It should be now as it was clearly meant to terrorize at least a portion of our society into complicity and inflame further attacks against them, it can be both a hate crime and a terrorist action, but no one calls it that.

Hate crimes are terrorism by nature. Which makes it strange that they're differentiated

[Broomstick]

"Hate crime" was defined decades earlier than terrorism in the US. "Terrorism" became the term for foreign-originating (or perceived) hate crimes directed at the US, as opposed to internal-origin asshats shooting up people inside the country.

[Joun_Lord]

Speaking as an American who is legally able to carry a gun but does not ... honestly, the odds of any one particular person getting shot, outside a few very small locations, are pretty low. Clearly, it does happen but it's like getting hit by a tornado. Yes, there is a risk, but take reasonable precautions and most likely you won't get hit. I say that as someone who has lived in several cities that, at one time or another, were declared "murder capitals" in the country (St. Louis, Detroit, Chicago, and Gary, IN). There are more effective ways to reduce typical risk than arming yourself, although not all of those methods are equally easy or cheap.

I don't carry a gun because I don't feel a need to. I have considered a shotgun for home defense, but have not bought one. I used to carry a knife when I was much, much younger for "self defense" but the few times I was attacked while wearing it I wasn't able to draw and use it and wound up either running like hell or defending myself with bare fists. So what's the point of carrying a weapon you don't actually use? Sure, IF I can not run away IF there's something at hand and IF I can get it into play I'll use it (in this household we've used a crossbow, garden shovel, craft knife, car door, sgian dugh and a few other things as various self-defense items), but my (admittedly limited) experience has been that just having a weapon is not the same as using it. There's more to effective self defense than simply strapping a pistol onto your hip.

While a lot of Americans own guns, a lot of those gun owners aren't carrying them around daily (some use them only for hunting, some for target shooting, most don't feel so threatened they need to be constantly armed). There are also a lot of Americans who just don't own guns at all, for whatever reason. Most of us fear a random mugger or ex more than a spree killer, because spree killers are a fuck of a lot more rare than muggers and ex's.

Pretty well expanded on some of what I was meaning when I said not all people need to carry a gun to defend themselves. Most people don't feel in danger enough to own a weapon and many that do own a weapon probably won't carry it around all the time.

And you do put a very good point in that just having a weapon doesn't automatically mean they are defended, one needs to have some training to use it effectively. Not to mention nerve.

Though as someone who has had to defend themselves with a knoif I understand the need some might have to carry a weapon. I fought off my attackers with a knife successfully mostly because at the time I was a pretty in shape and scary dude (primarily because of my scarily bad haircut and chin stripe beard thing) and my attackers were chickenshits who backed off after I poked one with my laughably tiny knife. Other people aren't so lucky, other people especially weaker people won't be able to defend themselves with fists or run away (though if that is a viable option that should ALWAYS be the thing people should do if at possible). I got lucky that my woefully inadequate served me well for the time. If circumstances were different that time I was attacked I would have been fucked considering I was woefully outnumbered and had no option to retreat. A gun would have more easily equalized the situation of one me vs 6 other people. Or I would have dropped the weapon and shot myself in the foot, either or. Though of course the fact a firearm could make one person vs 6 unarmed people a more fair fight is why firearms are so easy to use for mass killing.

Yes there are superior ways to reduce risk to oneself then buying a arm made of fire but as you said they are not the easiest or cheapest methods. Probably the easiest method of reducing violence towards oneself is to take the running away option to the next level and moving. Not really an option for alot of poor people (which is a gripe I always have when conservative nobjobs always say "if somebody doesn't like something/can't find a job they should just move" as if its so easy especially now for someone to just pull up stakes and GTFO). Another method is the celebrity method and have a bunch of armed guards surrounding you and protecting you but thats not exactly something that is cheap.

For most people the only reliable options are to buy a weapon and the easiest and most reliable weapon is invariably a gun. And if that don't work use more guns.

Even for people who don't need a gun the option needs to be available. You have been lucky so far to be able to defend yourself without resorting to using a firearm. As you said, you've defended yourself with random stuff but have considered a shotgun. You've clearly decided you don't need it but the option is still there if Broomstick decides she needs a boomstick (I'm totally sure I'm the first to make that pun, totally sure).

Your point about most gun owners not carrying is also true. I currently don't own a firearm except some cool ass flare gun because its cool and made in a country that doesn't even exist anymore but even when I did I never carried (I stopping owning guns not because of any hatred of weapons but for a variety of reason including not having enough time to train with them and having my sister's kids coming into my house alot and not having a good gun safe). I did alternatives to strapping on a gun, such as not going to the damn mall for several years and even now not staying in for more then a few minutes, barely going out anymore, not really have many acquaintances and packing on the pounds I guess for extra padding.

But still some people don't have those options, most people don't want to be a fat-ass shut-in that can barely go out without hyperventilating. They want to have a weapon and for good reasons. The reason is rarely stopping a mass shooting though, usually the reason is to stop a mugger and, especially in the case of wimmen-folk, to stop rapists and other attackers women (and men to a lesser degree) are sadly accosted by far too often.

[Broomstick]

And you do put a very good point in that just having a weapon doesn't automatically mean they are defended, one needs to have some training to use it effectively. Not to mention nerve.

It also helps if someone isn't surprising you from behind by pinning your arms to your sides - makes deploying a weapon MUCH more difficult which might be why he did that (we did knew each other, he was intent on rape, knew I usually carried a knife, and was very surprised when, despite being restrained, I managed to kick him hard enough to lay him out on the ground, after which I ran like hell).

I fought off my attackers with a knife successfully mostly because at the time I was a pretty in shape and scary dude (primarily because of my scarily bad haircut and chin stripe beard thing) and my attackers were chickenshits who backed off after I poked one with my laughably tiny knife.

On the other hand, if it had been me you might have been fucked - not because I'm bigger or stronger (odds are I'm not) but because I'm assuming you, like most people don't really know how to fight with a knife. The two times I found myself confronting a knife-wielding attacker I disarmed the person and beat the shit out them bare-handed because 1) my self-defense training covered that 2) they were surprised as hell I didn't flee in terror at the sight of a blade (yeah, it was scary) and 3) MOST IMPORTANT: they didn't know what the fuck they were doing with it. Yes, I brought a fist to a knife fight. And won. Twice. Not because I'm rambo, but because I actually had some real training.

Other people aren't so lucky, other people especially weaker people won't be able to defend themselves with fists or run away (though if that is a viable option that should ALWAYS be the thing people should do if at possible).

Yeah, the "not able to run away" thing was how my husband came to almost beat someone to death with the car door and slice his face up with the knife he used to use for trimming his bagpipe reeds. "Handicapped" does not equal "helpless". My husband used to own several guns when he lived in a bad neighborhood and Og help you if you ever get within arm's reach of him in a fight. Nonetheless, when he moved out of that neighborhood he sold his guns, no longer feeling a need to own them, and has not repurchased any since. Well, the pellet gun we use on raccoons in the attic when we can't catch them live for later release. You could use that on a human being, of course, but it's not ideal in many ways, my crossbow or even Japanese garden knife are arguably better options. (No, really, it's a garden trowel. Really. See the markings for depth of planting? Oh, sure, could probably be used to gut a large mammal but it's a garden trowel)

Yes there are superior ways to reduce risk to oneself then buying a arm made of fire but as you said they are not the easiest or cheapest methods. Probably the easiest method of reducing violence towards oneself is to take the running away option to the next level and moving. Not really an option for alot of poor people (which is a gripe I always have when conservative nobjobs always say "if somebody doesn't like something/can't find a job they should just move" as if its so easy especially now for someone to just pull up stakes and GTFO). Another method is the celebrity method and have a bunch of armed guards surrounding you and protecting you but thats not exactly something that is cheap.

Oh, yeah - that's a major problem I have right now, not being able to move away from the shithole next door.

On the upside, some cheap methods of reducing your risk include "be aware of your surroundings", like, don't have your ear-buds in, don't walk and text, basically, pay attention to what's going on around you. Bad guys would rather target someone oblivious than someone aware. So I don't agree guns are the "easy" option (they aren't that cheap, either). That's part of the problem with self-defense instruction, they don't always cover the easy shit like PAY ATTENTION to what's going on around you.

You've clearly decided you don't need it but the option is still there if Broomstick decides she needs a boomstick (I'm totally sure I'm the first to make that pun, totally sure).

Oh, totally....!

[Ralin]

"Hate crime" was defined decades earlier than terrorism in the US. "Terrorism" became the term for foreign-originating (or perceived) hate crimes directed at the US, as opposed to internal-origin asshats shooting up people inside the country.

Personally I'm of the opinion that we should eliminate the hate crime label and just make a separate felony calling 'lynching' or 'terrorism' or something for murders and assaults aimed at intimidating a community. Less appearance of bias and it would cover similar crimes that otherwise don't qualify but probably should. i.e., a white drug dealer murders a white neighborhood watch activist to frighten his community into silence.

[cmdrjones]

Essentially yes.

I remember back around 1999, me and some friends had set up a rather naive near-future campaign based on the idea of a massive terrorist threat to the US... set in 2020 which is not so far away as all that. And while we were, again, rather comically naive in some ways, almost without thinking we predicted that right-wing domestic terrorism was more likely to be a nation-disrupting threat.

I wonder if we were right, simply because foreigners are easier to rally against, because you don't have to deal with idiots (left or right wing) repeating Kerensky's mistake of saying "no enemies to the left" and refusing to let the machinery of the state respond effectively to provocations by a party more left-wing than themselves.

[Corresponding stupidity on the right also exists and has a lot to do with, for instance, why the German elite of the early 1930s brought Hitler into power]

Agreed to a point.... the pastor and everyone else there needed a gun to defend themselves because guns exist, they just wouldn't have needed to USE them if asshat hadn't decide to attack them.

No, they'd needed some asshole to not shoot them.

Despite what our enlightened Euro-commie-peon cousins think, the US is not the Wild West were everyone need to be packing heat to defend themselves from assholes armed with automatic assault weapons with assault clips. Most people are never going to need a gun to defend themselves...

The problem is, if you decide to not carry one on the grounds that you probably won't need one... well, someone like this can show up and easily make you into one of his many, many casualty statistics.

Guns exist, yes, but the only reason why they are dangerous is because of asshole like this Roof guy abusing the weapons (so clearly we need to punish the millions of people who don't abuse their weapons, thats just logical)...

Except that there really aren't a lot of choices here. Turning society into an armed camp makes it harder for random murderers to make you a victim- but it increases the death rate from suicides and impulse killings. In a society where most people are unarmed, but a few people decide to be massively violent and have easy access to weapons, you get... this.

I'll let this stand as my reply... summed it up quite nicely sir...

[Channel72]

I think Juan Cole summed it up well:

Top Ten differences between White Terrorists and Others

snip

That's pretty funny, and certainly rings true. But I think it's a bit more complicated: white terrorists are called terrorists if they are very obviously politically motivated or use explosives, or cause mass casualties (like over 10 or 20) (i.e. Tim McVey).

But when we have random acts of isolated gun violence (the DC sniper, etc.) then we tend to inconsistently apply the word terrorist to anyone who isn't white. Usually, however, anyone who sets off a bomb or causes a massive body count, regardless of skin color, is usually labeled a terrorist. The inconsistency mostly applies to mass shootings. (Although I don't think anyone called the Virginia Tech shooter a terrorist, even though he wasn't white.)

It's more like this:

Anyone of African, Middle Eastern, Iranian, or Indo-Aryan ethnicity is likely to be labeled a terrorist by the media, if they kill random victims with a gun. A white person who does the same will most likely not be labeled a terrorist, but rather a mentally unstable maniac.

My opinion is that "terrorist" should really be reserved for people with obvious political motivations, regardless of the weapon they used, or their skin color. This asshole, for example, should really be labeled a terrorist, because he was politically motivated (even if he probably was also mentally unstable.) Anders Breivik should also be labeled a terrorist, because he was politically motivated. Now, I'm not going to do a huge media study, but going only on recollection I seem to remember that Jared Lee Loughner (the first guy, who shot the congresswoman in Arizona) was very rarely referred to as a terrorist - even though in my opinion that's exactly what he was. However, I think Breivik was pretty often referred to as a terrorist - even though he was white. (Again, massive body count does the trick.)

So the inconsistent way we apply the label "terrorist" definitely reveals racial biases, I just think it's a bit more complex than the way Juan Cole presents it. Essentially, white people need to have a high body count or use explosives if they want the media to call them a "terrorist". Publishing a crazy manifesto on Facebook also helps.

[Gandalf]

That's pretty funny, and certainly rings true. But I think it's a bit more complicated: white terrorists are called terrorists if they are very obviously politically motivated or use explosives, or cause mass casualties (like over 10 or 20) (i.e. Tim McVey).

There may be quite a difference in conceptions of terrorism before and after 2001. Before 2001, terrorism was something that most Americans saw happening in far off lands. Terrorist hijackings of planes could be inoffensive joke fodder, and the IRA was weirdly romanticised in parts of the US. "Terrorists" weren't the designated societal other.

If McVeigh happened today, he'd be considered a mentally ill loner.

[Channel72]

There may be quite a difference in conceptions of terrorism before and after 2001. Before 2001, terrorism was something that most Americans saw happening in far off lands. Terrorist hijackings of planes could be inoffensive joke fodder, and the IRA was weirdly romanticised in parts of the US. "Terrorists" weren't the designated societal other.

Uh... are you kidding me? Did you live through the 90s? In the 90s terrorists were most often associated with domestic, right-wing, anti-government militias - pretty much the opposite of foreign. Tim McVeigh and the Unabomber were the archetypal terrorists of the 90s - and this is despite the massive media attention garnered by the 1993 WTC bombing. (Remember that?)

If McVeigh happened today, he'd be considered a mentally ill loner.

I disagree. I think that even today, any politically motivated person who used explosives and killed lots of people would be called a terrorist, regardless of skin color.

[Gandalf]

Yeah, sorry about that weird sentence. I'm not sure why, but for some reason I was thinking of distinct "terrorist organisations" when formulating that post and forgot the weird loner terrorists of the nineties, and didn't put the appropriate caveat. Perhaps I was thinking about the IRA's reputation in the US, and it grew out from there. Who knows.

What I was getting at was an idea of the cultural conception of terrorism shifting massively after 2001, where the label of terrorist becomes a far more serious one with a shift in connotations.

[Broomstick]

But when we have random acts of isolated gun violence (the DC sniper, etc.) then we tend to inconsistently apply the word terrorist to anyone who isn't white.

I may be misremembering this, but wasn't the "T-word" used for the DC sniper before anyone knew who he was or what he looked like? Actually, who they were, because there were two people involved.

[Channel72]

What I was getting at was an idea of the cultural conception of terrorism shifting massively after 2001, where the label of terrorist becomes a far more serious one with a shift in connotations.

I agree - but my point is basically that even though Juan Cole's humorous observations about the word "terrorism" certainly ring true, the reality is that up until September 11th, terrorists were mostly white people in the minds of the average media-consuming American. Back then, terrorists were these fucked up domestic militias and also "eco-terrorists" (remember those?) The face of terrorism in the USA was Tim McVeigh and Randy Weaver/Ruby Ridge - basically lots of anti-government white people and white supremacists. Then we had Ted Kaczynski and other "eco-terrorists", basically left-wing insane environmentalists. And in Europe, the word terrorism was more associated with the conflicts in Northern Ireland and the IRA, along with Basque separatists in Spain (again, more white people) than it was with Muslims. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden wasn't much of a blip on the cultural radar. Sure, Arabs in general still had the general pop-cultural association of crazy terrorist (recall Doc Brown's unfortunate incident with the Lybians back in the 80s) due to a long history of terrorist attacks in North Africa and the Middle East, but this wasn't really the kind of terrorist Americans were actually afraid of - for the most part - despite the first WTC bombing. The point is, to the average guy in the 90s, using the word "terrorist" to describe a white person was totally normal.

It's only after 9/11 that this totally changed, for the most part. So I think the inconsistent application of the word "terrorism" these days when it comes to white people is partially a racial thing, and partially just a reflection of the times - these days people expect terrorists to be Muslim.

But don't worry. White terrorists just might be making a comeback, unfortunately. Frankly, I'm surprised they haven't already - what with a Black Democrat in office.

[Patroklos]

I think you are forgetting things like the rash of airline bombings in the pre 90 and things like the Beruit bombing. How about Munich or the London embassy attacks or the near monthly major Palestinian bombings in Israel? I think some of you are forgetting a lot of events pre 9/11. Remember the Kenya/Tanzinian embassy bombings? Terrorism was a thing before then, and most often the news headlines then originated from the same place it does today.

[Simon_Jester]

And Japan was seen as a military threat before Pearl Harbor... just less of one.

The point is that terrorism wasn't seen quite so much as a 'panic button' threat, and that the average American's image of a terrorist was... racially diverse, in that a lot of the most high profile terrorists in American history were white.

[Flagg]

At first blush, this guy seems like a lone, medicated, nutjob racist... however, that being said, I am (pleasantly) surprised that there haven't been MORE attacks of this nature, not necessarily on Churches, but on Black people. Even IF you are a nut with a grudge, it speaks to his lack of character that he didn't attack a group of gangbangers 'hangin' out in da hood,' he went after defenseless Christians. This goes to show how very Non-racist much of American society is, even with massive amounts of provocation, the oft predicted 'race war' fails to materialize.

Why hello, fellow sentient life form! What planet are you from and do you come to ours bearing gifts of cancer cures and an end to discord?

[Patroklos]

And Japan was seen as a military threat before Pearl Harbor... just less of one.

The point is that terrorism wasn't seen quite so much as a 'panic button' threat, and that the average American's image of a terrorist was... racially diverse, in that a lot of the most high profile terrorists in American history were white.

I disagree, because you are making zero distinction between foreign and domestic terrorism. The simple fact is that foreign terrorism was something Americans cared about prior to 9/11 and if you characterized a question with just generic "terrorist" domestic is not what people would be thinking.

Obviously it wasn't as much of a panic issue as you say is it was after 9/11, but the idea that Americans were more focused on Ted Kazinskis over Lockerbies is bizarre. You know there was an Israel lobby prior to 2001.

[Ralin]

And Japan was seen as a military threat before Pearl Harbor... just less of one.

The point is that terrorism wasn't seen quite so much as a 'panic button' threat, and that the average American's image of a terrorist was... racially diverse, in that a lot of the most high profile terrorists in American history were white.

I disagree, because you are making zero distinction between foreign and domestic terrorism. The simple fact is that foreign terrorism was something Americans cared about prior to 9/11 and if you characterized a question with just generic "terrorist" domestic is not what people would be thinking.

Obviously it wasn't as much of a panic issue as you say is it was after 9/11, but the idea that Americans were more focused on Ted Kazinskis over Lockerbies is bizarre. You know there was an Israel lobby prior to 2001.

Patroklos, correct me if I'm wrong but you're not American, right? Because I think you're greatly underestimating the American public's lack of interest in and often ignorance of the rest of the world, especially in the period you're talking about

[Patroklos]

I'm american, and if you think the U.S. media doesn't report every explosion in it can get a story out of anywhere in the world your obvious misconceptions demonstrated above are epically biased. Do you honestly think the USS Cole, Beruit barracks, any airline bombing anywhere, and anything regarding Israel art all as just a few examples isn't nightly news or front page fair in the US?

[Ziggy Stardust]

RE: This little sidebar about terrorism pre-9/11 versus post-9/11.

Well, obviously this isn't super definitive, but we can use Google's Ngram Viewer search to get an idea of general word usage over a period of time, which can be considered a sort of proxy for public interest/opinion. That is, it tracks the number of times the word occurred in publications during a specified time frame.

Here we can see the frequency of the words "terrorist" and "terrorism" from 1980 to 2008. You can see that the usage of terrorism rose over the course of the 1980s, but actually began to DROP in the early 1990s. The late 1990s saw a very small uptick, but it still remained far below even 1980s levels. Then 2001 comes along and we see a massive spike, that actually begins to drop again in 2007.

Using the phrase domestic terrorism, we see a gentle but more or less continuous increase from 1980 to 1996, followed by a spike, and then an even larger 2001 spike.

We can do similar searches comparing, say, usage of terrorism vs bombing or terrorism vs hate crime or terrorism vs Israel to get a very, very general idea of how these prevalent these topics were in the public mindset at the time. Most interesting, I think is domestic terrorism vs foreign terrorism; however, that doesn't cover the more generic "terrorism", which is used with such absurdly higher frequencies compared to either individual phrase that I can't even plot them all together.

EDIT: Man, it is fun to play around with this thing.

[Elheru Aran]

I'm american, and if you think the U.S. media doesn't report every explosion in it can get a story out of anywhere in the world your obvious misconceptions demonstrated above are epically biased. Do you honestly think the USS Cole, Beruit barracks, any airline bombing anywhere, and anything regarding Israel art all as just a few examples isn't nightly news or front page fair in the US?

The media reports plenty of explosions... but how many people actually care? That's the catch right there. It takes something big and notable actually happening inside the US for most Americans to really notice. It's gotten to the point where mass shootings get a week of news coverage and then everybody forgets about it. Who remembers the shootings in Vegas with that right-wing couple who killed a couple of cops? Even this one in Charleston is going to become a sideshow within a week or so, until the guy's trial comes up and then we'll have more blather about it, but the fact of the matter is that the public attention is so jaded and short-spanned that it takes something near and major to really keep it.

[cmdrjones]

At first blush, this guy seems like a lone, medicated, nutjob racist... however, that being said, I am (pleasantly) surprised that there haven't been MORE attacks of this nature, not necessarily on Churches, but on Black people. Even IF you are a nut with a grudge, it speaks to his lack of character that he didn't attack a group of gangbangers 'hangin' out in da hood,' he went after defenseless Christians. This goes to show how very Non-racist much of American society is, even with massive amounts of provocation, the oft predicted 'race war' fails to materialize.

Why hello, fellow sentient life form! What planet are you from and do you come to ours bearing gifts of cancer cures and an end to discord?

The latter, but so far nobody has seen fit to implement it, lip service, yes.... but implementation, not so much.

[Channel72]

Obviously it wasn't as much of a panic issue as you say is it was after 9/11, but the idea that Americans were more focused on Ted Kazinskis over Lockerbies is bizarre.

What the fuck...

Are you serious?? Maybe you have a more worldly perspective, but I can pretty much guarantee that the average 90s American would be way more likely to be familiar with the Unabomber and Tim McVeigh than the Lockerbie bombing. Of course, Google zeitgeist didn't exist back then, so I can't prove this one way or another. I'm just pretty surprised to see another American claim that foreign terrorism was more of an issue back in the 90s than domestic terrorism. The only foreign terrorism that I even remember as being widely significant to Americans was the '93 WTC bombing - apart from that Tim McVeigh and other right-wing crazies pretty much stole the spotlight. I recall that foreign terrorism started to register as a potentially serious threat in the late 90s, when we started hearing about terrorist "sleeper cells" and whatnot. But before say, 1997, it was all about the right-wing militias and the Unabomber, etc. Yes... there were bombings overseas (USS Cole, etc.), but you're just deluding yourself if you think the average non-military-family American gave a shit about that. And the constant ongoing Palestinian/Israeli conflict (blah blah Yasser Arafat/Bill Clinton blah blah blah) likely registered as nothing more than background noise drowned out by reruns of Ricky Lake and Jerry Springer.

[Metahive]

I remember a story that back when the adaption of The Sum of All Fears was in production (it came out in 2002, but filming was done in June 2001), the filmmakers decided to change the originally middle-eastern terrorists of the novel into Neo-Nazis because they thought middle-eastern terrorists pulling off a major attack on the US was too outlandish. Should tell you all about popular perception of terrorism pre-9/11.