The "well-armed and well-prepared" gunman who killed 49 people in Orlando Sunday is part of a growing trend: Domestic terrorists choosing guns over bombs as their weapons.
Although terrorism still accounts for a negligible share of all gun deaths in the U.S. — since 1970, fewer than five deaths most years — from 2002 to 2014, 85 percent of people killed by terrorists in the U.S. were killed using guns, according to our analysis. Every terrorist attack in the U.S. last year in which someone other than the perpetrator was killed involved guns, according to a preliminary list provided by Erin Miller, who manages the Global Terrorism Database. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the number of people killed by guns in terror attacks in the U.S. has risen, as has the number of terror attacks involving guns.
The reason is pretty clear and simple—it’s a lot easier to get an assault rifle than it is to acquire bomb-making materials.
Experts say the increased use of guns in terror attacks is an alarming trend. Arie Perliger, director of terrorism studies at the U.S. Military Academy, said that U.S. terrorists are turning to guns because since Sept. 11, the federal government has monitored the use of explosives and the trade of materials that can be turned into explosives. People on the terrorism watch list aren't barred from buying guns, by contrast, although such a ban probably wouldn’t have stopped the Charleston or San Bernardino shootings, because the suspects weren't on the watch list.
Nothing has been done to make guns harder for would-be terrorists to get. And not only are they easier to get, they "are less likely to result in a terrorist operation being compromised," according tonJeffrey Simon, a visiting lecturer in the department of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of Lone Wolf Terrorism: Understanding the Growing Threat.
James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University professor who studies mass killings adds, "It's much easier to purchase and learn how to shoot a gun than it is to learn how to make a bomb."
Meanwhile, the agency which should have the power to combat all of this—the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—has been hamstrung. This article is four years old, but the situation has remained unchanged: The agency is actually prohibited from creating a simple gun registry that would allow it to quickly track weapons used in crimes. It has to do those searches using the phone and combing through reams of paper. All of which makes guns the would-be terrorist's go-to weapon of mass destruction.
Because a Congress beholden to the NRA has decided that’s how it must be—never mind the body count.