Domestic terrorism in the U.S. should be treated seriously

Over this past break I visited a friend of mine in London. While there, we took the Chunnel to Paris for the day, which happened to be a week after the shooting at Charlie Hebdo. Paris that day was a very different city from the Paris I remembered visiting the year before: Stores were closed, the streets weren’t very busy, sirens wailed and police officers carrying large guns patrolled the sidewalks. I was surprised by the somber mood. Yes, there had been a terrorist attack, but only 12 people had died. In my mind, it didn’t register as being that grave.

I had learned about the attack on Paris as I headed out the door to the airport. My brother had come pelting down the stairs yelling about a terrorist attack in Paris. At his words, images of planes crashing into buildings flew through my head. I steeled myself as I checked The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times websites, but I couldn’t find what I was looking for. There was no mention of “mass casualties” or “explosions.” No “suicide bombings” or “plane hijackings.” Instead, the biggest news story I could find was one about 12 people being shot.

This attack didn’t register in my mind as an act of terrorism because in my lifetime, there have been 16 mass shootings, each totaling a minimum of eight victims. In the entire history of the United States, there have only been 25 mass shootings. During my lifetime, I’ve learned the stories of 193 people whose lives were unnecessarily taken. I’ve grown numb over the years reading about stories like Sandy Hook and Fort Hood because these tragic events have unfortunately become the norm in our society.

The shooting of Charlie Hebdo left me angry and concerned because I hated feeling indifferent about the 12 lives lost. The attack made me think about why people responded to Paris with protest parades, international condemnations and multiple arrests. I wondered why that didn’t happen in the United States when 32 people were killed at Virginia Tech in 2007 or when 13 people were killed at Columbine High School in 1999. I realized it was because of the classification of the attack — the Parisian shooting was an act of terrorism, whereas gun violence in the U.S. is caused by “crazy people.”

My generation and those born after me grew up in a state of fear regarding Muslim extremists. We look at people who appear vaguely Middle Eastern as potential terrorists. Just the word “terrorist” brings a certain image to mind and a certain feeling of horror and defiance. And yet we don’t look at the people we see on the streets in the same way, even though our chances of being killed by a random American are higher than the chances of being killed in an international terrorist attack.

In the U.S., we justify the murder of innocent Americans by blaming the mental instability of the shooters. However, we should regard these mass shootings in the same way we view international terrorism. One might even venture to call these mass shootings acts of domestic terrorism since the FBI defines domestic terrorism as “activities... involv[ing] acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law; appear intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population... and occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.” If we apply this definition to mass shootings, almost all of them fall under the heading of domestic terrorism.

Since the attack in Paris, I’ve been wondering why people in the United States are still allowed to carry and purchase guns, why I put my life in danger every time I leave my house, why my definition of “normal” means being okay with the murder of 12 innocent people.

I still don’t understand the justification that allows people to own weapons. If there weren’t any guns, there wouldn’t be mass murders of schoolchildren, there wouldn’t be unrest over the killings of Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown and there wouldn’t be two-year-olds accidentally killing their mothers in Walmarts. What would be so bad about not having guns? If countries like the United Kingdom and Germany have succeeded so far without them, why can’t we?

We need to stop justifying terrorism in our homeland. It’s time for us to decide if we’re really okay with 20 six- and seven-year-olds being killed, and if we aren’t, we need to do something about it. The U.S. is supposed to be a country built upon the concept of freedom, and that means that everyone has the right to feel safe going to school or to the mall. We have to call a mass shooting what it is: not the random act of a crazy loner, but an unjustifiable attack on American citizens. As long as guns continue to circulate, these terrorist attacks will continue to happen. We have to do something to stop them. No one else should be added to the list of those lost too soon.