A security guard at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC was murdered by a white supremicist today.
An elderly gunman opened fire with a rifle inside the crowded U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday, fatally wounding a security guard before being shot. Authorities said they were investigating a white supremacist as the suspect.
This could be a never-ending series, but for the law enforcement agents that actually prevent such acts from occuring. The Southern Poverty Law Center assembled a list of Terror From the Right in 2005, and it is a tribute to federal law enforcement. Please follow me below for a reminder of how terrorism is (used to be?) prevented.
A quick look at the type of people on the SPL's list:
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Craig Orler ... and Gabriel Garafa, said to be a leader of the neo-Nazi World Church of the Creator and a member of a racist Skinhead group called The Hated, were charged with illegally selling 11 guns to police informants.
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FBI agents ... arrest ... Demetrius "Van" Crocker after he allegedly tried to purchase ingredients for deadly sarin nerve gas and C-4 plastic explosives from an undercover agent. ... He allegedly also says "it would be a good thing if somebody could detonate some sort of weapon of mass destruction on Washington, D.C."
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Ivan Duane Braden, a former National Guardsman discharged from an Iraq-bound unit after superiors noted signs of instability, is arrested after checking into a mental health facility and telling counselors about plans to blow up a synagogue and a National Guard armory in Tennessee.
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Neo-Nazi Skinhead Sean Gillespie videotapes himself as he firebombs Temple B'nai Israel, an Oklahoma City synagogue, as part of a film he is preparing to inspire other racists to violent revolution.
And that is just from April 2004 to May 2005. Read the entire list to get a terrific (if not up-to-date) reminder of why terrorism needs to be treated as extreme criminality.
Aside: One thing that struck me while reading through the list is that many of these folks will be out of jail at some point in their lives. In fact, the first several on the list are either due out of jail soon or were never caught. There is as much danger of domestic terrorism today as there has ever been in my lifetime, and it would seem that our law enforcement agencies do not have the tools they need to shut down the extremist hate that permeates our radio and television. One doesn't need wiretapping when they spout their views on air.