Exquisite Timing: USAT Runs Op-Ed on 'Beware the Christian Extremists'
Stange pegs her contention that Christians are a bigger problem than Islamists to a July report by the federally funded National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.
That report has come in for a great deal of derision from people who live in the real world. First, it was based on a ridiculously tiny sample of participants. The survey relied on 364 responses from individuals who worked at 175 different state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies, or SLTs. The U.S had almost 18,000 "state and local law enforcement agencies employing at least one full-time officer or the equivalent in part-time officers" in 2012.
Second, it is entirely possible that SLT law enforcement has more routine and direct contact and familiarity with Christian extremists than Islamists, depending on what parts of the U.S. the survey respondents represented. If so, even though the number of murders they have committed pales in comparison to the lives lost in jihadist attacks in the U.S., SLT officials might be expected to rate the threats they see more often themselves as more serious than the ones they only see or read about in the news. It's reasonable to contend that officials in Federal law enforcement, which is very involved with monitoring Islamist activity, likely would have answered the survey quite differently.
Other distinctions between the small number of Christian extremists and the apparently growing number of violence-prone Islamists in the U.S. should be obvious to Ms. Stange, but they clearly aren't.
Stange pegs her contention that Christians are a bigger problem than Islamists to a July report by the federally funded National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.
That report has come in for a great deal of derision from people who live in the real world. First, it was based on a ridiculously tiny sample of participants. The survey relied on 364 responses from individuals who worked at 175 different state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies, or SLTs. The U.S had almost 18,000 "state and local law enforcement agencies employing at least one full-time officer or the equivalent in part-time officers" in 2012.
Second, it is entirely possible that SLT law enforcement has more routine and direct contact and familiarity with Christian extremists than Islamists, depending on what parts of the U.S. the survey respondents represented. If so, even though the number of murders they have committed pales in comparison to the lives lost in jihadist attacks in the U.S., SLT officials might be expected to rate the threats they see more often themselves as more serious than the ones they only see or read about in the news. It's reasonable to contend that officials in Federal law enforcement, which is very involved with monitoring Islamist activity, likely would have answered the survey quite differently.
Other distinctions between the small number of Christian extremists and the apparently growing number of violence-prone Islamists in the U.S. should be obvious to Ms. Stange, but they clearly aren't.
