Monday, December 21, 2015

Is fear of terrorism overblown?


In the United States, an individual’s likelihood of being hurt or killed by a terrorist (whether an Islamist radical or some other variety) is negligible. 
Consider, for instance, that since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Americans have been no more likely to die at the hands of terrorists than being crushed to death by unstable televisions and furniture…And by the time you turn the lights off to sleep this evening, somewhere around 100 Americans will have died throughout the day in vehicular accidents – the equivalent of “a plane full of people crashing, killing everyone on board, every single day.”  
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/23/youre-more-likely-to-be-fatally-crushed-by-furniture-than-killed-by-a-terrorist/

That's something liberals often say. However, it's something they only say when the killer is a Muslim. When, however, the proverbial "angry young white male" shoots up a school or firebombs an abortion clinic, I don't hear liberals say the risk of being killed at school or at an abortion clinic is statistically insignificant compared to traffic accidents, or no greater than the risk of being crushed to death by unstable furniture and TV sets. No, when that happens, that's a crisis, that's intolerable, that demands gov't intervention. 

1 comment:

  1. It's difficult to imagine the government's response if Christians started becoming "radicalized" and began perpetrating the same types of acts on the same scale as Muslims.

    I'm guessing it would be quite different than the tiptoe approach being taken currently with the Islamists.

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