Terror on wheels

Gun-rights advocates used to joke that automobiles should be banned on the same principles justifying gun bans, since cars kill more people each year than guns. As if inspired by those jokes, terrorists have adopted the automobile, or more specifically the truck, as their weapon of choice, a blunt object that can be acquired without potentially intrusive background checks. In New York City today, someone used a rented truck to run over a few dozen people on a bike path, killing eight of them according to the latest count. After crashing into a school bus, he emerged from his vehicle apparently intending to commit suicide-by-cop, brandishing a paint gun and a pellet gun in order to draw fire. He was wounded and taken alive, but the latest update didn't make clear whether or not his wound was life-threatening. Witnesses claim to have heard him shout, "Allahu akbar," to no one's surprise, though I suppose there's a tiny chance that that was just another way to get the cops to shoot him. We know only that he's 29 years old; whether he's a "lone wolf," insofar as that term is applicable to someone killing for a cause, or part of some cell remains to be learned. We're far enough along now that this attack is unlikely to change anyone's position, though the fact that it would be even more difficult to deny cars than guns to people on any discriminatory basis may strengthen the argument that the only practical safeguard against future attacks is more sweeping discrimination against Islam. What happened in Charlottesville this summer may prove that vehicular attacks can be carried out by anyone on the spur of the moment, but many will feel justified in arguing that regulations targeting Muslims will reduce the immediate probability of such attacks. The terms of the larger debate remain the same. One side refuses to compromise the nation's character or their own principles to thwart threats that remain essentially theoretical through actions that, to their minds, declare people guilty before the fact, while the other is unwilling to risk actual lives on principles that don't define their own more materialist sense of citizenship. Each side finds the other too willing to sacrifice something real to something less so, and I'm sure it's only a matter of hours, if not minutes, before someone tries to change the subject by declaring today's incident a "false flag" attack designed to distract us from the Manafort case, or with some other ulterior motive. Meanwhile, the world grows more violent and intolerant as cosmopolitanism falls further behind globalization. The spread of truck attacks is particularly terrifying because each new attack shows how easy it can be for not just a Muslim but anyone to take weaponize transportation. It seems like fewer and fewer people think that their problems, personal or global, can be solved without a bloodbath. With that in mind, Happy Halloween!