Memes like the one above circulate from time to time; this particular one refers to the Bastille Day 2016 attack in Nice, France. Generally, it is used to posit that it makes no difference what type of weapon is used, because killers will always find a way to kill.
Let’s be clear up front – yes, killers will always find a way to kill. Violent ideology, mental derangement, and simple hatred will unfortunately always be part of our society. In that sense, the meme raises an important point that we need to focus on what it is that drives somebody to commit murder. However, it fails to recognize that the weapon is still relevant.
Trucks, like many other things that can be misused in a dangerous fashion, present some risk to society. Really, everything presents some risk to society. Water is important, but people drown in it, and drinking too much can kill you. Air is important, but people can get sick from breathing it in when it’s contaminated, and injecting even a small amount of air into the wrong part of the body can be lethal. Nobody is proposing banning water or air; of course, most people also accept that regulating our interactions with water and air to protect public health is a reasonable step (despite the lack of any Constitutional guarantee to water and air).
Firearms are slightly different, in that they are dangerous when used as designed. It turns out that terrorists and mass murderers have already figured this out, though, so I’m not really putting anybody in danger by sharing that secret. Let’s take a look at two bar graphs from the Global Terrorism Database, looking at various weapons used in terror attacks from the beginning of 1970 through the end of 2015.1 Each shows a total number of incidents using that weapon over that entire timeframe, then a breakdown of how many incidents resulted in zero fatalities, 1-10 fatalities,11-50 fatalities, 51-100 fatalities, and 101+ fatalities. One is for firearms, and the other is for vehicles of all kinds (not just trucks), excluding vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, which the database categorizes separately. Given that the meme above specifically references a truck that “wasn’t a bomb”, this is appropriate.
You might notice that the number of incidents are not similar to each other. Firearms terror incidents numbered 55,819 over the 1970-2015 time frame. Vehicle incidents numbered 157. There were three incidents in which vehicles were used as the primary weapon that resulted in 101+ fatalities; each occurred in the United States on 9/11/2001. When the database is updated to include 2016 data, the Nice truck attack will cause the 51-100 fatality bar to tick up by one; in 2015 alone, there were 18 firearms terror incidents that killed 51-100 people, and another 11 that killed 101+.
Yes, it’s important to focus on identifying killers, determining their motives, and finding other ways to prevent them from committing murder. We know that’s not going to be 100% successful. Ignoring the tools that they overwhelmingly choose due to their excellent suitability for mass murder is a fool’s errand. Complex problems usually have multifactorial solutions, and ignoring any of those factors hinders the ability to find a solution.
References
- https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/ . Global Terrorism Database. Accessed July 16, 2016.