Mass Shooting in El Paso
Tragedy in Texas
How unfortunate is it to discover that America has experienced yet another mass shooting? And as the New York Times article “Shootings Renew Debate” explains, the recent incident in El Paso is an example of homegrown terrorism, which “has made it glaringly clear how poorly prepared this country is to fight it.”
As it turns out, the 21-year-old male suspect Patrick Crusius was a white supremacist. On the one hand, domestic terrorism is difficult to deal with. After all, the nation has been focusing on how to combat Islamic terrorism overseas since the 9/11 attacks. On the other hand, President Trump has vowed to provide federal law enforcement ‘whatever they need’ to combat domestic terrorism, as the NYT reports. However, domestic terrorism definitely has its difficulties. Such difficulties include the First Amendment making the prevention of terrorist attacks nearly impossible. As the article puts it, the threat of Islamic terrorism has been, in large part, “replaced by violence from white supremacists—an increasingly internet-driven phenomenon of lone wolves, not groups, that will prove immensely difficult to combat.”
Pursuing the Death Penalty
While prosecutors pursue the death penalty for Crusius, the looming question remains: How can we combat homegrown terrorism, hopefully preventing future attacks like this? Unfortunately, after all, we Americans seem to have accepted that mass shootouts are a part of life. A lot of this seems to be traced back to the shooting spree at Columbine High School, two teens killing 13 and wounding many more. And now we have both the El Paso shootout we discussed, as well as the Dayton mass shooting within a twenty-four-hour timeframe. Will something substantial be done to address this tragic issue?
Sources
“El Paso Shooting: Prosecutors to Seek Death Penalty for ‘Domestic Terrorism.’” CBS News.
Tavernise, Sabrina, Katie Benner, Matt Apuzzo, & Nicole Periroth. “Shootings Renew Debate Over How to Combat Domestic Terrorism.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/us/politics/domestic-terrorism-shootings.html
