re: The OK beheading guy had converted to Islam

quote:

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Your chances of being harmed or killed by Islamic terrorists (or really ANY terrorists) are ridiculously low. So low that you should almost never think about it...much less try to make some random loon in Oklahoma part of some broader, threatening mosaic.

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Just for the record, since people love to say things like this, I'm pretty sure that most people would be fine not taking any big steps to fight terrorism if you could guarantee them that their and their loved ones chances of dying due to FUTURE terrorist attacks is lower than being struck by lightning.

But you can't possibly do that. Clearly terrorists want to kill a lot more Americans than they have since 9/11. Can they? It's up to your side to prove that, in the absence of our "fear-driven" countermeasures, terrorists still wouldn't be successful here on a grand scale.

I'm not happy about the Patriot Act. I'm not happy about us trading freedoms for security, and it would really suck to have traded freedom for security from a trumped up risk. But it is not obvious to me that terrorists couldn't be successful here if we didn't take measures to prevent them from killing a lot of Americans.
And your stats about car accidents and lightning strikes don't change the equation very much at all. I'm not worried about what terrorists didn't accomplish from 2002-2014.