We know what the recent terrorist attack in Orlando was not.
Forty-nine people were killed and fifty-three wounded not due to the violent outburst of a right-wing zealot. The shooter, Omar Mateen, was a second-generation Afghan-American, a registered Democrat, and a fierce critic of American politics and culture.
Nor were the killings caused by easy access to “assault weapons.” The vast majority of American terrorist casualties have not involved firearms. Box-cutters and planes, not rifles, led to the 9/11 attacks and some 3,000 deaths. The two Tsarnaev brothers used explosives to kill and maim during the Boston Marathon, a tactic that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab also tried in his attempt to blow up an Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight. The Oklahoma beheader and the UC Merced attacker Faisal Mohammad preferred knives to guns, as did the recent Paris terrorist who knifed to death a French law enforcement couple.
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