By David French
Monday, June 13, 2016
Something has changed, and it’s not the availability of
guns in the United States.
Consider the following facts: According to data from the
New America Foundation’s International Security Program, from September 12,
2001, until the rise of ISIS in the late spring of 2014, jihadists killed 21
Americans in terror attacks here at home. Only three Americans died during the
post-9/11 phase of the Bush administration.
Since ISIS burst on the international scene, the death
toll has more than tripled. Jihadists have killed 73 American men and women in
just two years. And that number would be much higher if not for the courage and
bravery of local police. The list is sobering:
• From April to June, 2014, Ali Muhammed Brown killed
four Americans on a “mission of vengeance” against the United States.
• On September 25, 2014, Alton Nolen beheaded an Oklahoma
woman with a knife. His social media pages were covered with evidence of jihadist
leanings and motivations.
• On May 3, 2015, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi attacked
an exhibit of Mohammed images in Garland, Texas. They wounded a security
officer, but police killed them before they were able to carry out mass murder.
• On July 16, 2015, Mohammad Abdulazeez killed five
people at two Chattanooga recruiting stations. FBI director James Comey
declared that Abdulazeez was “inspired/motivated” by terrorist propaganda.
• On November 4, 2015, Faisal Mohammed went on an
ISIS-inspired stabbing spree — wounding four — before he was killed by campus
police.
• On December 2, 2015, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen
Malik pledged allegiance to ISIS then killed 14 people and wounded 21 at a
Christmas party in San Bernardino, Calif.
• On January 8, 2015, Edward Archer pledged himself to
ISIS and attempted to assassinate a Philadelphia police officer. The wounded
officer chased down and apprehended Archer before he could commit any other
acts of violence.
• On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen pledged himself to ISIS
and killed 49 people and wounds 53 at a gay nightclub in Orlando.
This death toll at home is augmented by an extraordinary
toll overseas — with Paris facing repeated violent attacks, Brussels bombed, a
Russian airliner brought down, and ISIS-inspired violence reaching all the way
to Australia.
Yet if you watched Twitter yesterday, you would have seen
entire quarters of the Left react with political fury, actually blaming the NRA
for Sunday morning’s massacre and demanding greater gun regulation. In fact, in
some quarters, there was far greater rage at gun owners and politicians who
protect the Second Amendment than there was at the actual terrorist who
slaughtered Americans or the terrorist army that inspired him. It was, quite
frankly, stunning.
And it misses the point. ISIS is a game-changer, and the
idea that gun control will make America safe from jihadists is sheer fantasy.
Al-Qaeda’s calling card was the spectacular strike — blowing up embassies,
almost sinking an American warship, bringing down the World Trade Center — but
once America finally woke up to the danger, we were able to protect ourselves
from the elaborate attack.
ISIS, however, has learned the West’s true vulnerability.
A free society simply can’t police everyone at once, and a relentless
propaganda campaign aimed at radicals worldwide will yield jihadists who are
ready to kill with any and all weapons available. The Paris attacks were
conducted in a nation with far tighter gun controls than any state in the
United States, and it resulted in more than twice the casualties of Orlando.
Europe has suffered more than the U.S. in spite of its restrictive legal
regime. The virus is spreading.
The gun-control debate is nothing more than a destructive
distraction. Is there a single viable gun-control proposal of the last decade
that would keep a committed jihadist from arming himself? Indeed, the
gun-control debate keeps us from focusing on the true danger: a terrorist
movement that’s learning how to attack a free society. It keeps us from
focusing on the terrorists’ capabilities and motivations. It keeps us from
asking the very hard questions about how to defeat a movement that’s based not
just in a jihadist army that takes and holds territory but also in an ancient
religious idea that has never gone away.
Against that backdrop, I can understand the very human
temptation to fix one’s attention not on the colossal challenge of jihad but on
the seemingly more manageable and more familiar challenge of attacking
Republicans. Focusing on jihad means looking Islam in the face. Focusing on jihad
means rethinking long-held assumptions about policy, politics, and liberal
coalitions. Focusing on jihad means recognizing that many Muslim members of the
leftist coalition actually, truly hate the LGBT side of the liberal alliance.
And so progressives are left with gun control as a
unifying argument. They can’t resolve the irresolvable tension between
championing Islam while also championing LGBT rights, so they punt. They lash
out at the familiar bogeymen on the right. But terrorists don’t care. NRA or no
NRA, they’ll keep trying to kill Americans, and they’ll keep succeeding until
we finally wake up and realize that guns aren’t the enemy — jihadists are.
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