zlacker

Because people with certain biases who want to ignore evidence and blame this all on Islam to define "these terrorist attacks" in a way that excludes many similar attacks? We've been averaging about one mass shooting a day in the U.S. There are so many that I'd forgotten about some major recent ones, like the Umpqua Community College Shooting just a month ago.

These usually get planned well in advance by some very sick people who are trying to kill as many people as they can and go out in a blaze of glory. Sure, the existence of opportunistic terrorists networks that get these people to coordinate their attacks and stamp a ideology on them tends to mean that the one day body count is higher for a particular incident. Still, the body count per attacker is often comparable, it's just that the attacks happen on the same day instead of a few weeks apart.

But yeah, if we ignore the non-Muslims who do things like this we can say it's all the fault of Muslims.

>>Chatha+(OP)
There is a difference between a lone mass shooting and a terrorist attack coordinated by a government. It goes without saying that this is not the fault of Muslims in general. It's the fault of some Muslims, in this case IS.

>>jules+21
I suppose, in the same way that Dylan Roof is the fault of some Conservatives, or some Southerners, or some Americans, etc. Yes, the existence of terrorist organizations that make use of these lost angry men means that in a minority of these cases a group can tell them to attack on the same day rather than weeks apart, and means they can stamp an ideology on them, like I said. So yes, there is a difference, just as there is a difference between the shooting that are done by a couple of friends (like Columbine) and the ones done by a lone wolf (VTech).

Still, people don't find it inappropriate to bring up Columbine when they talk about VTech or Aurora. When people try very hard to exclude all the other mass attacks and single out only the ones connected to Islam in situations like this speaks more to their personal biases than anything else.