The Holmes killing or the Sandy Hook killings by Adam Lanza at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, December 14, 2012, where Lanza killed 20 children and 6 adults are shootings that are all part of the American social landscape. That is to say, it is a commonplace thing for people to readily resort to guns to settle some actual or perceived threat against themselves or their group. This is also true for Dylann Roof, who murdered nine African-Americans during their Bible study and prayer session in South Carolina in June 2015. He is an advocate of white supremacy.

These type of mass shootings are done by the ‘usual suspects’; that is, these killings are to be expected. They are dismissed as the acts of ‘loners’. Of course, Americans are frightened, dismayed, and deprecate these acts of terror; but, they are powerless to do anything about them because powerful vested interests cynically theorise that some people will die to save the majority. In as much as some medications will kill a few patients, overall, the drug will be beneficial to many more people. So the cost-benefits equation is at work here. That is, the benefits of making and selling guns outweigh the cost of few thousand people per year dying from gun violence in the USA .

But unlike native terrorists, or the actions of alleged lone-wolfers, the terrorist massacres of San Bernardino and other European centres are usually associated with a foreign ideology. This ideology is usually religiously based with hate; and fear being one of its central tenets. For this ideology of hate insists that Western values and lifestyles are degenerative and exploitative. Thus they must be destroyed.

Two species of terror

So home-grown American terror is viewed as a different species of terror from the foreign-inspired one. For, the former is not imported from overseas; that is, it is not usually a critique of Western values; nor does it have a desire to destroy Western values. That, at worst, the perpetrators of these mass killings that regularly plague the USA, are the actions of individuals who because of mental illness or poor socialization have run amok. On the other hand, mass killings by the jihadis are seen as a more insidious and malignant form of terror.

This distinction then between these two types terrorism – the actions of American loners, even if motivated by KKK ideology; and, the actions of radical jihadis like ISIS or Boko Haram – such, seems important to Americans. For the foreign terrorists are worse than their home-grown terrorists, for theirs do not seek to destroy America; but, the jihadists, whether at home or abroad, present an existential threat to Americans.

Politics of terror

The politicians certainly reinforce these views. Local mass shooters are in need of better mental health provisions, and should serve long prison terms if convicted; on the other hand, the foreign jihadis are so despicable, that they should be exterminated.

But, more significantly, as a defense against either groups of terrorists – the lesser terrorists and the greater terrorists – Americans, either as private citizens, and as government entities, should better arm themselves with as much weaponry as possible in the face of these massacres and threats.

George S Garwood, Jamaican writer and adjunct professor in World Religions, Florida, USA. Send comments to the Observer or merleneg@yahoo.com.