Since 1990 3,179 people were killed and about 8,000 were inured in 20 terror attacks on US soil [1]. Three major terror attacks [2] were the WTC bombing (6 dead, 1042 injured), the Oklahoma City bombing (168 dead, 680+ injured) and of course the 9/11 terror attacks (2977 dead, 6000+ injured).
10 attempts failed or were foiled [3].
That’s all in all about 160 deaths per year. In 2007 accidental discharge of firearms killed 613 people in the US. Accidental drowning killed 3,443 people. Accidental poisoning killed 29,846 people [4].
Law enforcement should of course try to prevent terror attacks but given those numbers I don’t see why US citizens should give up much of their liberties in return.
[1] I used the list of terrorist incidents on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents) as a source which means that those numbers are not necessarily exact but close enough for the purpose of this comment.
[2] Responsible for more than 99 percent of the dead and more than 97 percent of the wounded.
[3] That number seems very low. Has anybody better numbers or can anybody confirm that number?
[4] All numbers: Jiaquan Xu et al. (2010): Deaths: Final Data for 2007. In: National Vital Statistics Reports, Table 10. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (PDF: http://www.cdc.gov/NCHS/data/nvsr/nvsr58/nvsr58_19.pdf)
10 attempts failed or were foiled [3].
That’s all in all about 160 deaths per year. In 2007 accidental discharge of firearms killed 613 people in the US. Accidental drowning killed 3,443 people. Accidental poisoning killed 29,846 people [4].
Law enforcement should of course try to prevent terror attacks but given those numbers I don’t see why US citizens should give up much of their liberties in return.
[1] I used the list of terrorist incidents on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents) as a source which means that those numbers are not necessarily exact but close enough for the purpose of this comment.
[2] Responsible for more than 99 percent of the dead and more than 97 percent of the wounded.
[3] That number seems very low. Has anybody better numbers or can anybody confirm that number?
[4] All numbers: Jiaquan Xu et al. (2010): Deaths: Final Data for 2007. In: National Vital Statistics Reports, Table 10. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (PDF: http://www.cdc.gov/NCHS/data/nvsr/nvsr58/nvsr58_19.pdf)