Friday, August 17, 2018

Terrorist Attacks in Decline

You wouldn't know it, but facts show that terrorist attacks and deaths from attacks have been declining around the world substantially over the past four years. There was a peak in 2014, but since then there have been major decreases.

This Washington Post story gives a summary. A few choice quotes:

Despite such high-profile attacks and responses [as the recent London car attack], …statistics released this month by the University of Maryland suggest that 2017 was the third consecutive year that the number of terrorist attacks around the world — and the deaths caused by them — had dropped. So far, 2018 looks on track to be lower still.
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...a closer read of the 2014 statistics paints a nuanced picture. START’s data from the year found just three countries — Iraq, Nigeria and Afghanistan — accounted for 60 percent of deaths from terrorism. Even though the total number of deaths globally from terrorism that year was clearly terrible (more than 45,000, according to START), it was still less than the number of deaths due to drug overdoses that same year in the United States alone.
A very small number of the total deaths occurred in the U.S. (27 of the ones in 2014, for instance, including the perpetrators). Despite this, a "Pew poll from July 2016, for example, found that voters thought that terrorism should get more time than any other subject in presidential debates."

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