So, we have to ask: Was Stephen Paddock a terrorist?

[BumRushDaShow]

95. It's not the same thing

One crime targets an individual (or their relatives/acquaintances/coworkers, etc) and the other crime targets large groups, usually in spectacular fashion (in many cases, groups that are completely unrelated to each other except for being in a specific place at the time). These are 2 distinct types of actions.

We have shootings here in Philly every single day (as do most cities). Crime "happens" and in the most newsworthy incident here, a couple days ago a 6 year old child was shot - caught in the crossfire, but fortunately a suspect was arrested not long after. However my level of vigilance or concern has not been increased because of that incident (desensitized).

However when you have a mad man spraying bullets from a high-rise hotel room on a crowd at an outdoor event, using what is speculated as being a high-powered, fully automatic weapon, where the attendees WERE screened before entry into the venue, NOW you are talking about ratcheting up my concern level for attending similar such events - including concerts that might be indoors as well, etc.

"Terrorists" target groups in public spaces. That garners the attention they apparently crave. You see this with shopping mall shootings, subway shootings, night club shootings, theater shootings, stadium shootings, or bombings in urban areas on well-known/crowded thoroughfares and so forth. But for some reason in the U.S., if you are not a "foreign-looking" or "foreign-sounding" or "foreign-born" or "foreign-descended" individual who has ties to some "foreign" entity or nebulous version of what has been deemed a "foreign religion", then suddenly you are not a "terrorist" when you carry out a similar crime that causes mass casualties.

The end result is the same no matter where you come from or what you look like, but in America, there is this pretzel-twisting of circumstances when it comes to WHO this applies to. You can go back to how long it took to declare Timothy McVeigh and his accomplice "terrorists", when during the early hours and days after the Oklahoma bombing incident, LEO were hunting for "Middle East men of dark complexion".