Terrorism begins at home. Long before 9/11 occurred, America was rocked by the occasional wave of domestic terrorist violence, from Columbine High School to the Oklahoma City bombing. Our history—like that of all countries—is littered with the bodies of people killed as "collateral damage" to some "higher" ideology or government policy. Slavery, it could be argued, was a form of terrorism, as was the slaughter and forced relocation of Native Americans. And so on.
Lately we seem to be following in that tradition with a vengeance as we've been rocked by a flurry of waves from our homegrown "suicide bombers." Ours don't strap explosives to their bodies and walk into crowds. They simply arm themselves to the teeth with an arsenal of "legal" weaponry and walk into crowds and start shooting until someone shoots them or they turn the guns on themselves.
For every news story that begins, "an Iraqi insurgent walked into a ____ (fill in the blank with market, mosque, restaurant, newsstand, train station) "and detonated the bomb…", we've had one that begins, "A lone gunman entered a _____ (fill in the blank with church, nursing home, trailer park, mall, high school, counseling service, city hall, courtroom) "and began shooting."
In the past two weeks, we've witnessed one man entering a nursing home in North Carolina, exercising his "right to bear arms" as "guaranteed by the Second Amendment" by seeking out his wife. Not gaining the satisfaction of finding her, he killed seven residents (one old lady aged 98) and a nurse and then wounded a cop before being subdued like a rogue elephant. Another man in Pittsburgh, railing against "the Zionists controlling the media," believed Obama was going to take away his "right to bear arms" (specifically assault rifles) and gunned down three police officers. A man in Alabama exercised his Second Amendment rights by killing 10 people, including family members, before shooting himself. Another man in Washington took revenge on his wife by entering his trailer and shooting all five of their children. Then he shot himself.
A new list of similarly violent and depraved acts could be compiled next month or the month after that, but it does seem like we are in the middle of a freakish patch. Some might blame the poor economy; others might point to our Greek chorus of right-wing pundits whipping up the hate. Or, as a British paper put it after the Pittsburgh shootings, "The killer's views echo the increasingly violent and apocalyptic tone taken by some conservative commentators to a changing America on conservative radio and television networks, where they believe the Obama administration are a bunch of communists and socialists waiting to destroy America internally." I don't subscribe to the latter view; right-wing idiots are always whipping up the hate, in good times and bad.
Here's a clue: April 16 is the second anniversary of the largest mass shooting in U.S. history, when a Virginia Tech University student killed 32 before killing himself. Right after that event, there was talk of closing the "gun show loophole"—the rule that, insanely, lets any adult buy guns from dealers at gun shows with no background checks.
An ABC-TV affiliate in Virginia, commendably, decided to test the loophole last week. They sent Omar Samaha, whose sister was one of the Virginia Tech victims, to a Richmond gun show with $5,000. Samaha was able to buy ten guns in less than an hour, including three assault rifles, four shotguns and a Glock pistol like the one that killed his sister.
As he said, "I don't want to think about how gruesome it was and how somebody used this type of weapon on my sister and so many innocent people. It's devastating."
Samaha did not have to fill out background checks or even show any legal form of identification. Show them the money in America and you can get your hands on an arsenal of "legal" weaponry within an hour in 33 different states. Expect more carnage.
