Terrorism- the Act or the Motivation?

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In the public discourse about terrorism, should we focus on the act or the motivation? For example, James Holmes shot 12 people in a Colorado cinema dead along with I forget how many critically wounded. Last week, two people shot 14 people dead (plus many wounded) in Southern California. In the first example, very little attention was given to Holmes' motivation and it was deemed sufficient to state that he was "crazy". In contrast, most discussion of the California shooting has focused on why it was carried out. I am not certain the distinction needs to be made. If somebody chooses to arm him/herself and randomly shoot innocent strangers*, does it really matter why? Either way it is the responsibility of the police and agencies such as the FBI or RCMP to prevent this from happening and to bring the culprits to justice.

If you are familiar with the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, as I recall there was no discussion of the perpetrators' motives during the trial, simply the details of the act they had committed. Had that crime been committed recently, would it be treated differently?

*the same applies if the perpetrator(s) used bombs e.g. the Tsarnaevs, Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph.

I don't agree. Figuring out motivation has always garnered a lot of interest. The Oklahoma City City bombing was labeled terrorism. And Aspergers was mentioned a lot with James Holmes as a motivation. Figuring out motives is important for prevention.

If someone is not fully responsible for their actions it needs to be taken into account.
If someone is acting as part of a larger agenda, in common with others, then that also needs to be taken into account.
Both actions and motivations need to be examined together.

The Lockerbie bombing of an airliner was state sponsored terrorism. Thus the response involved retaliation against the state that sponsored it (Libya).

Timothy McVie, and Andre Brevik, were not "state sponsored". But both were politically motivated. Both wanted to spark a mass movement against the government. So both were commonly called "terrorist".Domestic terrorists.

The Columbine shooters, the Sandy Hook shooter, the Aurora, shooter, were similiar in that they did not claim any political motivation. So they are not considered "terrorists".

They guy who shot up the Planned Parenthood clinic seems to have been a Columbine type spree killer who- as an afterthought - took politics into account to choose a random target (Im pro life- so I might as well choose an abortion clinic to do my spree killin in because I dont like those folks). I might call him a "terrorist". But its hard to say.

The couple in San Bernadion- we dont know the facts yet. They seemed to have been doing it in the name of Islamist ideology. And they may have even gotten money from foreign terrorist groups. So may have been at least domestic terrorists (like McVie), and may have even have been internationally sponsored terrorist more like the Lockerby bomber (though by groups like ISIS and Al Queda which are not exactly "states" ).

You tend to think of terrorists as being a subset of spree killers (aka mass murderers). If you kill a large number of folks on the installment plan over time instead killing them all at once you're called a "serial killer" rather than a spree killer or mass murderer.

Serial killers Ted Bundy, and Geoffry Daumier are not usually considered to be "terrorists".

But a tleast one American serial killer could be called a "terrorist". That being Ted Kozinski (unabomber) who did his thing for his own quirky political cause. But he had no constituency. No group he represented. He had a one man ideology. So he isnt usually called a terrorist for that reason.

Personally, i think the motivation should weigh in at least as important as the act itself.
Shooting up a classroom full of children becouse you are mentally instable and just 'snapped' is less bad than doing the same becouse you want to instill fear in a group of people (both are terrible, of course, but one is even worse than the other)

Domestic terrorism, or spree shootings, have many psychological motives(google "running amok"). But Islamic terrorism is a form of organized crime disguised as fanatical religion. In particular, the motive seems to be..........*drumrolll*............*badum-ching!* Sex and money!

I dont know if its "less bad",or not. But it is a different motivation. Requiring differing responses from society to prevent.

This the same question as the thread I started.

The IMO short answer is we shouldn't focus on crimes with the "terrorism" label.

We should focus on the act. The motivation is about establishing intent.

In the UK and I think to a some extend US I thin ant-terror legislation is merely filling in gaps in the legal system, or perceived gaps. Or worse is affording special powers over basic rights.

Even is someone could be a terrorist doesn't mean they can't be tried using normal laws like mass murder.

I hope nobody objects to my bumping this thread which I started, but I just felt like talking about Oklahoma City.

For those who don't know, the presumed motivation for the OKC bombing (in which 168+ died and and 680+ were injured) was the Waco incident two years earlier.

I will try to summarize what happened at Waco but please read on your own if you want to draw your own conclusions. So there was a Christian church (some would call it a cult) having a charismatic leader calling himself David Koresh. They established a compound outside Waco TX where most of them lived. To my understanding, the congregants pretty much did what Koresh asked of them, for example the men had to sexually surrender their wives to Koresh, also parents willingly gave up their underage daughters to him if he asked. Not much different from a number of similar "churches" we've heard of, and in fact, even having some parallels with ISIS(!).

What this group (calling themselves the "Branch Davidians") also did was establish a large armory containing many firearms and I don't know what else. At some point, a confrontation developed between them and either the FBI or the ATF which escalated to the point that a final showdown developed in which this armory blew up and many of the occupants of the compound were killed.

So a large minority of politically-minded Americans took up the cause of the Branch Davidians as martyrs for the 1st and 2nd Amendments. Which presumably led to Timothy McVeigh committing the act that he did.

If you search the internet, you will find many detailed and thoroughly researched studies of the Waco incident which purport to show that the armory blew up because Federal agents deliberately ignited it (with the presumed intention of wiping out Koresh and his followers).

As an aside, this seems to be start of virulent hatred towards the Clintons, as the Waco incident occurred in the early months of the Clinton administration with Janet Reno as AG.

Why I mentioned this in my OP was that, during McVeigh's trial (which resulted in a Death Sentence which was in fact carried out) is that, during this trial, nothing seemed to be said about McVeigh's motivation. Which I always suspected was because it was feared that doing so would inflame the many "mainstream, everyday Americans" who sympathized with his cause even if they didn't necessarily condone his action. Whereas, when Islamist terrorists are under investigation or trial, their motivation i.e. "Radical Islam" gets very frequent mention.

Another point I might add, is that since little interest was shown in McVeigh's motive for blowing up the Murrah Building in OKC, there was no national movement to discourage points of view such as his, or to prevent young people from taking up the same cause. In contrast, there have been visible efforts (with credible support from Muslim clerics in the US) to stop youngsters from sympathizing with ISIS.

Its an act of stupidity and being a volunteer for the next Darwin award on the basis of religion!

Basically, we have to think about both.

The Motivation: so we could at least attempt to take preventative steps

The Act: so we could determine Motivation better, and so we could take preventative steps.

Basically, we should think about the prevention of terrorism, as well as our reaction to the terrorism itself.

A lot of effort was made after Oklahoma City to demonize people who wanted less or were suspicious of govermnent. More specifically the republicans had made huge gains in the 1994 congressional elections putting President Clinton on the defensive. In the aftermath of the bombing Clinton regained momentem as republicans were put on the defensive, forced to attempt to explain that they were not supporters or enablers of militias in much the same way as Muslims are asked to prove they are not supporters or enablers of "Jahid".

Well I think terrorism has to be a violent act committed for some kind of gain usually political like getting support for a cause or bringing attention to it, or to get a point across. I don't think terrorism is a specific type of attack it can be a shooting, bombing ect but it has to have some kind of an agenda aside from simply committing violence.

Of course it can be hard sometimes, especially when the perpetrator kills them-self to determine if it was a rage killing, giving into some urge for sadism or terrorism. Also though there are cases where brain tumors have effected peoples judgement enough for them to commit violence, also in some cases someone may commit an act of violence in a state of psychosis where they may opt to send the person to treatment rather than prison.