In Trump's America, white US men are a bigger domestic terror threat than Muslim foreigners

In all the mass shootings that have occurred since Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, the perpetrator has been more likely to be a white male citizen of the US than a Muslim from a foreign country.

According to a study by the think tank New America, between 2001 and 2015 more Americans have been killed by homegrown right-wing extremists than by terrorists espousing Islamism.

Data compiled by the Gun Violence Archives, since President Trump took office on 20 January 2017, shows that 323 people have died and 1249 people injured in a mass shootings.

The mass shooting in Las Vegas, resulting in 59 deaths was, according to police, carried out by Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old resident of Reno, Nevada.

Speaking from the podium of the White House on Tuesday, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said now was 'not the time' to discuss stricter gun control.

In January, the President signed an executive order, since revised, that banned citizens of seven Muslim Majority countries from entering the United States, done in part on grounds of security.

None of the perpetrators of domestic terrorism in the US in the past 15 years has come from any of the nations named in any of the iterations of the 'travel ban'.

Prior to Las Vegas, the highest number of deaths from a mass shooting under the Trump presidency occurred in Plano Texas on 10 September, when Spencer Hight, aged 32, shot and killed eight people inside the home of his ex-wife Meredith Lane.

Drawing on the Gun Violence Archives and other sources, Voxhas highlighted terrorist incidents, including mass shootings, use of a vehicle to kill, and stabbings, carried out by white US citizens since Donald Trump entered the White House.*

These include:

• James Alex Fields Jr, 20, from Kentucky, was arrested and charged after a car was deliberately driven into a crowd of anti-fascism protesters in Charlottesville North Carolina.
• James Hodgkinson, 66, from Illinois shot Republican Member of Congress Steve Scalise in Northern Virginia. He was killed by police at the scene.
• Jeremy Joseph Christian, 35, from Oregon, was charged with murder, attempted murder, possession of a weapon and intimidation after two men were stabbed on a train in Portland.
• James Jackson, 28, from Baltimore is accused of a hate crime for Timothy Caughman’s murder - prosecutors say he travelled to New York to kill ‘as many black men as possible’.

These men fit the profile of a 'lone wolf' that existed prior to the Trump Administration.

A study published in June by the Reveal and Center for Investigative Reporting found 63 cases of Islamist domestic terrorism between 2008 and the end of 2016. These included plots which had been foiled by law enforcement and therefore did not take place (76 per cent were foiled).

In the same period they identified 115 incidents perpetrated by right-wing extremists, of which only a third were prevented.

The real threat to America appears to be from lone wolf shooters among their citizenry, not a Muslim from overseas.

HT Vox

*Correction: This piece has been amended to reflect the fact terrorist that incidents listed by Vox were not restricted to those which involved the use of a gun. 12/10/2017

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