One glaring concern is the risk posed by American citizens going abroad to fight alongside terrorist groups such as ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra and then returning to launch an attack on the homeland. intelligence and law enforcement community to combat lone wolf terrorism. These laws exacerbate an already difficult challenge facing the U.S. In nearly 10 percent of these cases, the FBI was able to find something else in their criminal history to block the sale.īut the FBI lacked the authority to block sales in 2,043 cases because of gaps in current law.Įven when the national security apparatus does everything right, efforts to prevent this type of attack are hamstrung by weak gun laws that allow known terror suspects to legally buy guns. Individuals on the consolidated terrorist watch list-including notorious terrorists such as Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri-attempted to purchase guns from licensed dealers 2,233 times between February 2004 and December 2014. Recent domestic terror attacks bear this out: the shooting at Fort Hood in November 2009 perpetrated by Major Nidal Hasan, the 2012 shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin that killed six, and the KKK leader who shot and killed three people at a Jewish community center in 2014.ĭata gathered by the Government Accountability Office also supports this trend. However, in the last 14 years, they have increasingly turned to guns as their primary weapon of choice. found that prior to the Al-Qaeda attacks on America on September 11, 2001, domestic terrorists more often used bombs to perpetuate their attacks. Researchers at Indiana State University examining incidents of lone wolf terrorism in the U.S. homeland.īut there is another aspect of this attack that has gone largely unaddressed: the increasing use of guns by domestic terrorists and the loopholes that allow known terror suspects to legally buy them. But speakers from the People's Party and the centre-right Radical Party saw the decommissioning as a weakening of Swiss security and as a vote of no confidence in soldiers, adding that the number of abuses with guns was "extremely small".The shooting attack on May 3 at an anti-Muslim art show in Garland, Texas, sparked debates about freedom of speech versus hate speech, the rise of lone wolf terrorists and the ability of the terrorist group ISIS to strike at the U.S. They also said it was a question of safety, as experts claim around 300 deaths every year are caused by army weapons, which also play a role in domestic violence. The anti-gun supporters argued that it was no longer necessary from a military point of view to keep army munitions at home. The initiative called for army weapons to remain in the barracks, a national gun register, a ban on private individuals buying or owning particularly dangerous guns such as automatic weapons or pump-action shotguns, and tighter controls on those who say they need to carry a firearm. He added that handing out ammunition was an act of trust in the soldier.Īlso hotly debated in the House of Representatives was a people's initiative launched by the centre-left Social Democratic Party and pacifist organisations to ban the estimated one-and-a-half million military weapons from Swiss households. Ulrich Schlüer, also from the People's Party, meanwhile insisted guns and bullets were an inseparable unity and that in a militia system it was essential to be able to quickly call on troops who were not in service. But Schmid defended the importance of keeping army guns in private households. He had previously argued that Switzerland's militia army needed to be able to mobilise rapidly "to protect airports and railway stations". Defence Minister Samuel Schmid, a member of the rightwing Swiss People's Party said he was ready to implement the motion. The government will also be able to lift the ban in the event of a security crisis. The House of Representatives on Thursday followed the Senate in backing a motion that will allow around 2,000 specialist troops, such as those guarding airports and other important installations, to continue to store their ammo in their cellars and attics. With the exception of a few thousand of the 120,000 soldiers in Switzerland's militia army who keep their cartridges at home, all army ammunition will have to be stored in central arsenals. This content was published on SeptemSeptemminutes
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