The Sunday night massacre in Las Vegas that left 59 dead and 527 people injured has sparked a very interesting debate: was this a mass shooting or an act of terrorism?
Top News Today
Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old white male, opened fire on an outdoor country music festival just outside of the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino on the Las Vegas strip. Paddock reportedly checked into the hotel on Thursday with 16 guns, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and the explosive ammonium nitrate, then randomly opened fire on the “sitting duck” crowd of concert attendees after breaking out the windows of his corner hotel suite.
Immediately following the killings, the media and others were quick to brand it a “mass shooting.” In fact, they called it “the worst mass shooting in US history.” Is their depiction accurate??
.
In 2015, white supremacist Dylann Roof shot and killed 9 people at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina. The murder was deemed a “mass shooting” and was not prosecuted as a terrorism case.
In 2015, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik shot and killed 14 people at a San Bernardino, CA office Christmas party. The murder was called a “terrorist attack.”
In 2012, James Eagan Holmes killed 12 and injured 70 in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater melee that was called a “mass shooting.
In 2012, 29-year-old security guard Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people and wounded 58 others at an Orlando, Florida gay nightclub. The murder was called a “terrorist attack.”
Hmmm…. What’s wrong with this picture??
In each of the above examples, the murders by while males were branded as “mass shootings,” while the murders by brown and/or Muslim people were branded as “terrorist attacks.”
HUH???
.
The lone wolf. The local shooter. The gunman. Any and everything, but terrorist. Wonder why.
— Ava DuVernay (@ava) October 2, 2017
.
Only in America can whiteness prevent the man who conducted the deadliest mass shooting in American history from being called a terrorist.
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) October 2, 2017
.
Top News Today
Interestingly, America has a long history of writing off murders committed by white men as a “mass shooting” at the hands of a good ol’ boy who was probably just disgruntled with society. However, America is also quick to label murders committed by brown people as a “terrorist attack” conducted by a likely radicalized Muslim. How is this possible??
Does race or religious creed actually define what is considered a “mass shooting” versus a “terrorist attack?” Or is America showing its fear of brown and Muslim people by creating labels that are not only unfair and nonsensical, but prejudicial and rooted deeply along the lines of ethnicity?
TAKE OUR POLL:
[socialpoll id=”2464436″]
Thank you for writing about this DJ. They had this story on the news all day yesterday and all everybody kept talking about was mass shooting. So when does it become terror? You laid out all the facts perfectly. They only call it terror when a brown person is involved. Every other time it is a crazed gunman or something like that. And we all know the reason why. They need to stop the bs and call it what it is, terrorism.