One thing that always occurs to me when there is a mass shooting is that they often don’t seem to be fundamentally different from suicide bombings. In both types of events, the perpetuator usually ends up killing and wounding a lot of people, and the perpetuator almost always end up getting themselves killed, by getting themselves blown up, shooting themselves, or getting shot by cops. And yet, suicide bombings are invariably described as terrorist acts while mass shootings are treated as ‘merely’ very tragic events (well, except perhaps if the shooter is Muslim). The one fundamental difference between a mass shooting and a suicide bombing seems to be that there might be less property damage from the former, even if in practice there might be different proportions of motives.
Not terribly important in the grand scheme of things, but the different perceptions have been bugging me …