The Fresno Bee reprinted a column by the New York Times‘ Nicholas Kristof belittling fears of radical Islamic terror — almost exactly two months before Tuesday’s deadly shooting attack in the city by a man shouting “Allahu Akbar.”
In a column published Feb. 17, under the headline, “Husbands are deadlier than jihadi terrorists,” Kristof wrote:
It’s true that American Muslims – both born in the United States and immigrants from countries other than those subject to Trump’s restrictions – have carried out deadly terrorism in America. There have been 123 such murders since the 9/11 attacks – and 230,000 other murders.
Last year Americans were less likely to be killed by Muslim terrorists than for being Muslim, according to Charles Kurzman of the University of North Carolina. The former is a risk of approximately one in 6 million; the latter, one in 1 million.
The bottom line is that most years in the United States, ladders kill far more Americans than Muslim terrorists do. Same with bathtubs. Ditto for stairs. And lightning.
Above all, fear spouses: Husbands are incomparably more deadly in America than jihadi terrorists.
Kristof also attacked Trump aide Sebastian Gorka, a former Breitbart News editor, for being focused on the threat of Islamic terror.
The main thrust of Kristof’s criticism was of Trump’s policy of “extreme vetting” of refugees from several terror-prone countries in the Muslim world.
Instead of terrorism, what Americans ought to fear, Kristof argued, is the proliferation of legal firearms in the country, which he argued had killed well over one million Americans from 1975 to 2015, while foreign-born terrorists in the countries under scrutiny had killed none on American goal. (Kristof did not count attempted, but thwarted, attacks.)
Three were killed in Tuesday’s attack. The suspect is 39-year-old Kori Ali Muhammad, who was already wanted in connection with an earlier shooting. He allegedly targeted white people in particular for murder.
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