HOMELAND SECURITY
Review, study, and report on a domestic or international terrorist event. Pick one of the following events or an event of your choice.
Mumbai
World Trade Center
Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing.
The Aurora, Colorado active shooter incident.
Then, address the following:
Look for indicators that might have been missed in preventing the event.
Suggest solutions to prevent a repeat of the event.
Sample Solution
The Aurora, Colorado active shooter incident was a tragic story of violence that occurred on July 20th, 2012 at a Century 16 Movie Theater. During the shooting 12 people were killed and 70 were injured by James Holmes who was later arrested and charged with 24 counts of murder and 140 counts of attempted murder (Carroll & Yuen, 2018).
In hindsight there are many indicators that could have been missed which may have helped prevent this tragedy from occurring such as increased awareness about his mental state prior to the attack or better communication between law enforcement agencies about potential warning signs like past behavior or suspicious activity in the area.
Furthermore, due to Holmes’ easy access to high capacity magazines & firearms it enabled him to carry out an attack more devastatingly than would otherwise be possible had he not procured these items beforehand. This highlights how gaps in gun laws can put communities at risk when those susceptible to violence are able take advantage of loopholes allowing them procure deadly weapons without proper background checks thus creating an environment where violent acts become much easier for them commit.
Overall, while we cannot change what has happened in the past it is still important that we recognize & reflect upon any red flags which might have arisen so that similar events don’t occur again in future.
Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual group, or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal, or political reasons, whereby – in contrast to assassination – the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat – and violence-based communication processes between terrorist (organisation), (imperilled) victims, and main target (audiences (s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought (Schmid & Jongman, 1988, p. 28)
For their study, Weinberg, Pedahzur and Hirsch-Hoefler selected 73 definitions from the 55 articles and compared these to Schmid’s (1988) 22 elements. The exercise yielded mixed results. For example, while some components such as the psychological elements of terrorism were in decline (41.5% to 5.5%), probably due to the absence of contributors from the field of psychology; the authors of the articles in the three journals made no variations between terrorist targets, that is – “combatants and non-combatants” or the “immediate target and wider audience” (p. 782). However, certain traits remained prevalent across both studies, and were used by the authors to generate another definition: “terrorism is a politically motivated tactic involving the threat or use of force or violence in which the pursuit of publicity plays a significant role” (p. 782).
The significant achievement of the trio lay in the ability to adopt observable and measurable terrorism components in designing their definition of terrorism. Thus, a remarkable achievement for research in the field of terrorism, especially media-related terrorism research as a result of the renewed focus on the publicity component, an element, which has remained relatively constant across both studies (p. 781).
However, in line with Sartori’s (1970) assertion that “the rules for climbing and descending along a ladder of abstraction are thus very simple rules ….We make a concept more abstract and more general by lessening its properties or attributes …” (p. 1041), the definition by the trio, may have lost one of the core ingredients of terrorism – the psychological impact. The trio had, however, explained that the reduction in salience accorded the psychology element, is not unconnected to the temporal differences from Schmid’s study. They also suggested that the writers of the published articles, which they used for the