The end of this conversation has been something I've talked about since a few years after 9/11 - unless the DHS, FBI, and CIA are actually super secretly stopping plots all the times (and for some reason only doing press conferences about mentally ill/developmentally disabled people that they paid and equipped to "plan" an attack). There are millions of guns and vehicles in the united states, and it's trivially difficult for people to acquire one or both. If there were really terrorists of various stripes hiding around every corner, I can't help but think there would be WAY more small-scale terrorist attacks. The total lack of their existence seems like decent evidence that the threats we're supposed to worry about aren't really all that threatening.
The end of this conversation has been something I've talked about since a few years after 9/11 - unless the DHS, FBI, and CIA are actually super secretly stopping plots all the times (and for some reason only doing press conferences about mentally ill/developmentally disabled people that they paid and equipped to "plan" an attack). There are millions of guns and vehicles in the united states, and it's trivially difficult for people to acquire one or both. If there were really terrorists of various stripes hiding around every corner, I can't help but think there would be WAY more small-scale terrorist attacks. The total lack of their existence seems like decent evidence that the threats we're supposed to worry about aren't really all that threatening.
PS, if you don't know what I mean in the parenthetical above: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/15/magazine/fbi-international-terrorism-informants.html