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Planned Parenthood Shootings Are Not Terrorist Acts, Say Authorities

Published on: November 30, 2015 at 8:42 AM
By Val Powell

The arrest of the suspect responsible for the shooting at a Planned Parenthood facility has further fueled an ongoing racial debate. Twitter users pointed out that while people are busy making Muslims look like terrorists, no one is condemning and demanding Christians to be held responsible for the suspect’s crime.

Following the terror attacks in Paris, many people around the world clamored for Muslims to take responsibility for the crimes that a few extremist Muslims had committed. It even led to discussions on whether Syrian refugees should be given asylum, as well as suggestions to have surveillance in mosques for fear that they are cradling religious extremists.

Robert Lewis Dear, 57, is a Christian man who was arrested after attacking a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which resulted in the deaths of one police officer and two civilians. Nine other people were wounded in the shootout. The gunman was apparently motivated by the “no more baby parts” allegation, claiming that the organization is involved in the shady for-profit sale of fetal organs. The rumor was spread through videos by a socially conservative group called the Center for Medical Progress.

Homeland Security is refusing to call the attack on the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs a terrorist act. Instead, they have labeled it as “merely a tragedy.”

Even political figures are hesitant to call the shooter a terrorist, but rather an anti-Obama guy who suffers mental disorders.

“It’s a tragedy… It’s, I think, a mental health crisis,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said during his interview on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos .

“I don’t think it would fall under quite the definition of domestic terrorism, although I’ll leave that to the Justice Department to make that determination,” he said, maintaining that the shooting could not be categorized as domestic terrorism.

But what really defines “terrorism”? According to the Department of Homeland Security, domestic terrorism is defined as “[a]ny act of violence that is dangerous to human life or potentially destructive of critical infrastructure or key resources committed by a group or individual.” Is it safe to conclude that Dear’s actions, regardless of his motives, are acts of terrorism?

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings , in response to the idea of banning Syrian refugees from the U.S. as a means to prevent terrorist attacks, told MSNBC, “I am more fearful of large gatherings of white men that come into schools, theaters and shoot people up, but we don’t isolate young white men on this issue.”

According to a survey done by the New York Times , out of 382 law enforcement agencies with PERF (Police Executive Research Forum), 74 percent perceive anti-government domestic terrorism as a larger threat than DAESH (known as ISIS) and other jihadist and Muslim extremists.

Also, the report suggests that right-wing extremists averaged 377 attacks every year since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The hashtag #WhiteTerrorism tweets , which came out after the Planned Parenthood attacks, raises the issue that right-wing groups in America are far more dangerous than Muslim extremists. In a study conducted by the New America Foundation, “almost twice as many people have died in attacks by right-wing groups in America than have died in attacks by Muslim extremists.”

The study also found out that “of the 26 attacks since 9/11 that the group defined as terror, 19 were carried out by non-Muslims.”

According to Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are about 300,000 people who are “involved in some way with sovereign citizen extremism” with about 100,000 people “forming the heart of the movement.”

[Image via Colorado Springs Police Department]

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