Picking up on Bryan’s excellent post yesterday, we now have two examples of what could be classified as “domestic terrorism”.

We have the Tiller case in Kansas where a doctor that offered late term abortions was murdered at his church while acting as an usher.

And we have the murder of a soldier and the wounding of another by a “muslim convert” who “was opposed to the US military” in Arkansas.

Each perpetrator appears to have been “a lone wolf”, i.e. someone who may have acted out of some sort of belief, but was otherwise unaffiliated with any group or movement which could be identified as a terror or pressure group.

If that’s the case, would you see each of these cases as “domestic terror” cases – i.e. do they fulfill the definition Bryan used, “the pursuit of political goals through the use of violence against noncombatants in order to dissuade them from doing what they have a lawful right to do”?

If so, what do you think the “political goals” of each given they were, or appear to be “lone wolves” (or was this simply a “crime of conscience” most likely rationalized by a rather sick mind) and do you think their acts were actually intended to dissuade others from doing what they have a lawful right to do?

And, given the new tendency toward attempting to classify crimes in this manner – were each of them “hate crimes”?

~McQ