A Terrorist Attack Happened in Vegas

“The act of terror then is the quantifiable use of human lives with the purpose of establishing fear.”

For an impossibly long ten minutes, bullets rained down over the heads of the 22,000 people attending the packed Route 91 country music festival in Las Vegas. Bewildered concert-goers initially thought that the bullets were pyrotechnics. From the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay resort, Stephen Paddock used dozens of modified firearms to shoot down on masses of innocent concert-goers, killing at least 58 and injuring over 500. By the end, it was the worst mass shooting in modern American history.

It is clear that this was a premeditated terrorist attack. Paddock deviously booked multiple hotel rooms throughout the Las Vegas area next to other high-attendance concerts. US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives agent Jill Snyder revealed that Paddock had purchased 33 assault weapons in the past year alone, and Clark County sheriff Joseph Lombardo indicated that Paddock had an escape plan as well. Cameras were arranged throughout his hotel room, and a getaway car replete with explosives and additional ammunition was set up. Furthermore, tens of thousands of dollars in overseas transactions and gambling all within weeks of the attack raised suspicious red flags.

Paddock senselessly attacked innocent civilians, meeting the textual meaning of terrorism. The overwhelming fear and panic was captured by the videos of concert-goers. Human lives became the means to an end.

In terrorism, the human lives lost become a quantifiable objective, a symbol for the progress toward violent and delusional motives. Paddock clearly demonstrated this; he did not attack particular individuals, but rather sought to kill scores of individuals—the greater the number, the better.

That being said, the official definition of terrorist attacks by the government is set by the US Department of State, which has a comprehensive list of Foreign Terror Organizations that consists of groups that have committed or have a clear intent for orchestrating a terrorist attack; key within its parameters, however, is “foreign.” A domestic terror charge does exist and it allows for the in-depth surveillance of groups associated with attacks, but it is not a criminal charge.

Because of the “foreign” label, domestic groups such as the Ku Klux Klan are conspicuously missing from the list of terrorist groups. Despite committing terrorizing atrocities throughout American history, these groups have maintained that they hold First Amendment rights and therefore cannot be classified by the government as a terror group subject to special scrutiny.

An example is Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of a federal government building, which killed 168 and injured over 680. It had a clear and evidenced political motive in attempting to punish the US federal government. And yet, despite the terroristic characteristics of both the motive and the fulfillment, McVeigh’s attack was not charged under terrorism.

More recently, the Charlottesville incident that involved the ramming of a car into a crowd of protesters, killing one, was even explicitly called an act of “domestic terrorism” by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The assailant had made neo-Nazi political objectives as a high schooler, and the Unite the Right rally that he was a part of during the attack was spearheaded by various alt-right groups, including former KKK Imperial Wizard David Duke. Yet, no charge of terrorism was brought up.

Classifying these domestic incidents as terrorist attacks holds important consequences. Terrorism creates vast avenues for federal authority and special attention, which have successfully quashed foreign terror threats through drone attacks and covert military take-outs. Even the domestic terrorism charge allows terrorist attacks to become linked to groups and movements and grants the government wide leverage to dissolve them.

Even “lone wolf” attacks often have accomplices and a deeper net of sympathizers; for example, McVeigh had learned how to weaponize explosive trucks through other anti-government conspiracists. Paddock’s getaway car and his ability to acquire and transport his arsenal of weapons suggests the presence of accomplices. And much like with foreign terrorist groups, government watch lists and surveillance highlight suspected domestic terrorists before they can do harm. Had Paddock been profiled, his build-up of firearms over the past year would have likely placed him on a watch list.

Though at this point it appears that Paddock did not have a politically-charged motive, it is important to note that terrorism in the modern world does not necessarily need to have a political dimension. An act of terror ought to refer to the act itself, much like how a murder is a murder and is prosecuted justly, regardless of whether it was a political assassination or a domestic violence case.

The act of terror, then, is the quantifiable use of human lives with the purpose of establishing fear. According to a 2016 CNN poll, over three-quarters of Americans fear a “lone-wolf” terrorism attack more than they do an attack from a foreign terrorist group. Labelling domestic “lone-wolf” attacks as terrorism is important to accurately reflect the fear associated. The great fear of terrorist attacks such as 9/11 has created symbols of terrorism in our mindsets, symbols that have driven us to the lengthiest war in American history; these symbolic connections need to be extrapolated to domestic terrorist attacks to have us adequately condemn them. Though thoughts and prayers are necessary for the victims and families of victims, action needs to be taken—labelling the attack as terrorism raises the stakes.