The definition of Terrorism

One single event killed 59 people and injured over 500 hundred more, it was an attack on the very fabric of America and our people. It was an act of terrorism, yet we do not hear the media use this term to describe the acts of the shooter in Las Vegas, why? Terrorism is defined as the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims. If this definition is broken down piece by piece it fits the Las Vegas attack almost perfectly, except for that last piece “in the pursuit of political aims.” The issue that we are having right now is that we do not truly know what the shooter's motivation was. There is no debating that what happened was an unlawful use of violence against civilians. I have heard several smaller news sources and blogs call this an act of terrorism and said that the reason that the mainstream media is unwilling to call this incident an act of terrorism is because the shooter was a white male. This argument does have some credence if we look back at recent mass killing events we do not hear these deranged white males called terrorists, but we do hear other killers labeled in this way, such as the Orlando shooter.

I think the issue that we are having seeing here is our society does not accept this definition of terrorism. In most all of the mass-killing events, the attacker’s intentions have been known and tied to some political cause bee it ISIS or some other organization. If we look at this incident and the Sandy Hook incident neither of these killers had any political connections that we know of. Both are absolute tragedies that cut deeply into the heart of America but based on this current definition of terrorism they do not quite fit. We heard ISIS claim responsibility for the shooting, but no evidence has been found to support that claim. I think it is important that we investigate that connection completely, because not only is it important that we know if he was truly an ISIS operator but it is equally important for us to know that he was not. We do not need to giver ISIS any more ammunition than is necessary and don’t want to allow them to have credit for an incident they had nothing to do with and further their cause in any way.

I am on the side of calling these incidents acts of terrorism, regardless of political intent, anything that cuts at our society such as this is absolutely an act of terrorism. What we do not see is the media working to change this definition, they are content to continue to call this man a “lone wolf” and dismiss the incident and continue talking about gun control issues. If the media cared about mending the broken race relationships in this country they would be calling this man a terrorist and challenging the status quo. Yet we allow them to continue to further detriment and divide our country with their language.