Terror Train

Wouldn't it be easier to simply post: I want all of you to know that I KNOW that all terrorists aren't Muslims? (Pat me on the back -- round of applause for ME!)

Seriously. What is this obsession my tribe has with calling gun-nut mass murderers "terrorists"? Different words have different meanings. If all people who terrorize people are terrorists, then the kid who followed me home from school threatening to kill me -- "terrorizing" me -- was also a terrorist, just like the Sept. 11 hijackers. He wasn't. He was a bully and also had no stated political agenda fueling his actions. (Should we stop using the term domestic violence and just call it terrorism, too?) I know many of you mean well. But sometimes it feels this desire to be so "woke" reduces us to the same nonexistent level of critical-thinking skills that we rail against.

Dylann Roof WAS a terrorist. Timothy McVeigh WAS a terrorist. James Holmes, Adam Lanza, Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, Seung-Hui Cho and Jared Lee Loughner (despite who he shot) were mass murderers. (Look 'em up if you don't remember which is which and note the difference.) If you want to get into mental illness, I tend to think ANYONE who commits a mass act of violence is insane to some degree (or incredibly desperate) -- suicide bomber or the guy in Vegas. But planting bombs in the U.K. because you think it stole part of your country's land is different than shooting people at a movie theater for no apparent reason.

 The U.S. has a GUN problem -- a problem that is uniquely AMERICAN. Why can't that be enough of a problem without taking our eye off the ball by trying to conflate it with other acts of inhumanity? 

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