Whenever there’s a mass shooting, one of the most important things for left-leaning activists in this post-Trump world (I should start naming them as “The Resistance”) to find out is whether the shooter is a white guy or not, and if so, to label him a terrorist.
I understand the reasons for it, because Trump and the right in general have spent so much time trying to label brown people as terrorists. Trump wants to ban immigration from certain predominantly brown-people countries for fear that terrorists will infiltrate the country. The vast majority of brown people are *not* terrorists, so the left feels the need to turn the tables on the narrative and point out that Americans are more likely to get killed by mass-murdering white terrorists already inside the country than brown terrorists from abroad. (Which is 100% true. It’s also true that Americans are more likely to get killed in a car accident or from a heart attack than by either white or brown terrorists. Statistically speaking, no American should be afraid of terrorism in any shape or form.)
I understand all of that. And if labeling a shooter as a terrorist in the legal sense of the word allows for stronger prosecution of a mass shooting perpetrator, I’m all for it. (Not that it matters in many cases, since they usually kill themselves.)
But to me, the term “terrorist” carries a strong connotation of not only political motivation, but animalistic, grisly violence. The terrorists of ISIL cut off people’s heads to literally terrify people into supporting their cause. “Submit to our rule, or we will cut off your head and kill your family,” is the ISIL campaign slogan. (I am paraphrasing a bit.)
(I actually don’t know what the ISIL campaign slogan is.)
What is the political motive for the Las Vegas shooter? I’m sure The Resistance would be happy to make up a message for him, but thus far, a little over seven hours since I first heard the news, I have yet to hear any (factual) motives ascribed to the shooter. I have my own suspicions deep in the cold blackness of my heart, but I’m not going to say anything until I read more facts. It could be weeks or months before we find out the cause of this shooting, if we *ever* find out.
The point I’m trying to make is that, in my mind, I don’t equate a person who cuts off political prisoners’ heads with a knife–or runs over people in a van, or walks into a crowd and blows himself up with a suicide vest–to people who shoot randomly at crowds from three hundred yards away. Not that I have any experience with this, but cutting off someone’s head with a knife seems like a pretty intimate act of violence that I would imagine requires a great deal of dedication to a cause.
Shooting indiscriminately at a crowd where you can’t even see who you’re hitting is … well, not the same. The violence and death is far, far away. This was an act of cowardice, especially when you kill yourself before getting caught. I am speculating wildly, but this guy probably decided to commit suicide and thought it would be fun to take a bunch of people with him. What did he care? He was planning to be dead anyway.
We can only guess at political motivations. It’s highly unlikely he wanted to prompt the country into enacting more gun control legislation. (It’s highly unlikely any such legislation will happen anyway, because even the Sandy Hook massacre of 20 children couldn’t do it.) It’s highly unlikely he was a Resistance-approved stereotypical racist white guy bent on ethnic cleansing because he was shooting at people attending a country music concert–not the place you’d expect to see a lot of minorities.
The only thing he’s accomplished politically is to drive a bigger wedge between the resistance and the alt-right on Twitter.
So again, call him a terrorist if it makes you feel better, but I don’t see this as the same kind of terrorism that is used as a weapon for political action.
