BLUF
\nHonest discussion requires acknowledging the data on who commits these attacks rather than filtering it through political narratives about which threats are acceptable to discuss.
\nIf policymakers and the public want effective prevention, they must start with a clear-eyed assessment of the risks rather than with wishful thinking.<\/p>\n
The Terror Threat Americans Aren\u2019t Supposed To Discuss<\/a><\/p>\n John R. Lott Jr. is president of the Crime Prevention Research Center<\/em><\/p>\n Many commentators claim that Islam does not pose a threat of violence in the United States. Influencers such as\u00a0Tucker Carlson<\/a>\u00a0often repeat this argument. Others, including\u00a0then-President Joe Biden<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0FBI Director Christopher Wray<\/a>, have argued that white supremacists represent the primary domestic threat.<\/p>\n Yet March alone saw multiple terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims. In Austin, a terrorist wore a sweatshirt reading \u201cProperty of Allah<\/a>\u201d during an attack. In New York City, bomb throwers shouted \u201cAllahu Akbar<\/a>\u201d while throwing a homemade shrapnel bomb. At Old Dominion University, a shooter also yelled \u201cAllahu Akbar<\/a>\u201d and had previously been convicted of supporting ISIS. Another attacker,\u00a0whose brother was a Hezbollah terrorist commander<\/a>, targeted Temple Israel in Michigan, and yet another attack, involving three men of Iraqi origin, targeted the U.S. embassy in Norway. The\u00a0Austin, Old Dominion, and New York City bombers and the Michigan synagogue<\/a>\u00a0attackers were also all foreign-born individuals who were naturalized U.S. citizens.<\/p>\n Terrorist attacks take many forms. For example, the\u00a0January 2025 truck attack<\/a>\u00a0in New Orleans, with an ISIS flag on the truck, left 14 people dead and 47 injured. But let\u2019s focus the discussion on one type of attack that has been extensively studied: mass public shootings. Researchers define a mass public shooting as an attack in which a perpetrator kills four or more people at one time in a public place, excluding crimes such as gang fights or robberies.<\/p>\n Looking at all\u00a0mass public shootings from 1998 through 2025 reveals several patterns<\/a>. Muslims commit these crimes at a disproportionate rate. White males commit them at a rate below their share of the population. And most shooters express no clear political ideology.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From January 1998 to December 2025, the United States experienced 108 mass public shootings by 111 shooters. Eight of those shooters were Muslim \u2013\u00a07.2% of the total<\/a>. During that same period, Muslims averaged about 0.4% of the U.S. population. In other words, their share of attacks was 18 times their share of the population.<\/p>\n The attacks included those carried out by Sulejman Talovic in Salt Lake City in 2007; Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood in 2009; Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez in Chattanooga in 2015; Omar Mateen in Orlando in 2016; Arcan Cetin in Burlington, Washington, in 2016; Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa in Boulder, Colorado, in 2021; and Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik in San Bernardino, California, in 2015.<\/p>\n By contrast, seven attackers \u2013 6.5% of the total \u2013 expressed white supremacist, neo-Nazi, or anti-immigrant views.<\/p>\n Some attackers described as anti-immigrant also expressed environmentalist motivations. For example, the murderers in El Paso, Texas; Dayton, Ohio; and Buffalo, New York wrote about concerns that population growth \u2013 particularly among minorities \u2013 was harming the environment. The El Paso killer wrote in his manifesto: \u201cThe decimation of the environment is creating a massive burden for future generations \u2026 The next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable<\/a>.\u201d Similarly, the Buffalo killer wrote: \u201cThere is no Green future with never ending population growth<\/a>.\u201d The\u00a0Dayton murderer<\/a> was also an environmentalist, a registered Democrat, who described himself on Twitter as a \u201cleftist,\u201d and was very upset that Ohio\u2019s Republican senator didn\u2019t support the gun control he thought necessary.<\/p>\n These attackers also described themselves as anti-capitalist, anti-conservative, and supportive of worker ownership of the means of production. Despite those claims,\u00a0news media outlets consistently<\/a>\u00a0label them broadly as right-wing extremists or white supremacists.<\/p>\n The media widely repeats the Anti-Defamation League\u2019s\u00a0claim<\/a>\u00a0that all extremist violence from 2022 to 2024 came from right-wing perpetrators. Yet the ADL labels the 2022 Buffalo mass murderer right-wing simply because he expressed racist views and excludes other attackers. Those omitted include Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who attacked the Covenant School in Nashville in 2023 after\u00a0denouncing<\/a>\u00a0\u201cwhite privilege\u201d and threatening to \u201ckill all you little crackers,\u201d as well as Robert Crimo, who killed seven people in Highland Park in 2022 and expressed\u00a0hostility toward Trump<\/a>, and Connor Sturgeon, who killed five in Louisville after\u00a0praising the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and criticizing police violence and Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n Overall, non-Middle Eastern whites make up\u00a0about 64% of the U.S. population but account for roughly 55% of mass public shooters<\/a>. Seven attacks involved individuals of Middle Eastern origin \u2013 6.4% of attackers \u2013 about 16 times their share of the population. That makes Middle Easterners the most disproportionate ethnic or racial group involved in mass public shootings during this period. Blacks, Asians, and American Indians commit these attacks at slightly higher rates than their shares of the population, while Hispanics commit them at substantially lower rates \u2013 about 9% below their share of the population.<\/p>\n Even before this month\u2019s attacks, the evidence showed that Muslims in the United States commit terrorism at a greatly disproportionate rate, though that doesn\u2019t mean that all or even most Muslims are a danger. The data also contradict claims that whites or right-wing white supremacists pose the primary terrorist threat.\u00a0Honest discussion requires acknowledging the data on who commits these attacks rather than filtering it through political narratives about which threats are acceptable to discuss. BLUF Honest discussion requires acknowledging the data on who commits these attacks rather than filtering it through political narratives about which threats are acceptable to discuss. If policymakers and the public want effective prevention, they must start with a clear-eyed assessment of the risks rather than with wishful thinking. The Terror Threat Americans Aren\u2019t Supposed … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,34,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-o-the-day","category-moslems-jihadis","category-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115744"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115745,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115744\/revisions\/115745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIf policymakers and the public want effective prevention, they must start with a clear-eyed assessment of the risks rather than with wishful thinking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"