so-called “Alphabet Bomber” (due to his letters to the media designating
a letter of the alphabet for each attack), who launched 10 attacks in 2 years.
From 2001 through mid-2016, the 69 lone wolves of the post-9/11 era
committed 147 attacks, killing 156
people and injuring 184.
These attacks
involved not only fi rearms and bombs but also small aircraft, biological
weapons, knives, and construction equipment. In short, lone wolves have
expanded their arsenal of weaponry in the post-9/11 era. While the multiple-
attack lone wolves
were prominent in the pre-9/11 era, the single- attack
lone wolf has risen to prominence since then and include such lone mass-
murderers as Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 and injured 30 in the Fort Hood
shooting of 2009; Jared Loughner, who killed 6 and wounded 13 in the
Tucson massacre of 2011; Wade Page, who killed 6 and wounded 4 in a
2012 shooting rampage at a Sikh
temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin; Dylann
Roof, who killed 9 and wounded 1 in the 2015 shooting at the Emanuel
African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina;
and Omar Mateen, who killed 49 and wounded 53 at a gay nightclub in
Orlando, Florida in 2016.
Trends in lethality are displayed in fi gure 3.1. A relatively stable pattern
emerges in the data over time. Between 1940 and 1958, on average
there
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The Ame rican Lone Wolf Te rrorist
[ 37 ]
were .02
people killed or wounded per lone wolf attack. For the decade
1960–1969, the number killed or wounded per attack was 2.2. For 1970–
1979, the fi gure was 2.3; for 1980–1989, it was 1.8; and for 1990–2000, the
fi gure
rose to 4.8—an increase due to the unusually large number of
victims (182) who
were wounded in attacks during the period. Of
these
182 victims, 110
were injured in a single attack: Eric Rudolph’s bombing of
the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996. While the number killed or wounded
for 2001–2010 normalized at 2.4, between 2011 and mid-2016 it increased
to 8.3. This upsurge was also due to the lethality of a par ticular case: Of
the 235 victims for 2011–2016, 102 of them
were killed or wounded by Omar
Mateen in Orlando.
Figure 3.1 indicates that during the fi rst fi
ve-and-a-half years of the 2010s,
the lethality of American lone wolf terrorism
rose to an all-time high. Of
the period’s 235 victims, 98 percent of them
were killed or wounded by
fi rearms.
The Social Impact of Lone Wolf Terrorism
The preceding numbers are superficial repre sentations of the true threat
posed by lone wolf terrorists in the United States. Simon is right when he
argues that it is the
impact
of terrorism on society and government that
counts.
6
In this regard, lone wolves tend to see themselves as historical
250
200
150
100
50
0
Number of
killed/wounded
1940–1959
1960–1969
1980–1989
1990–2000
2001–2010
2011–2016
1970–1979
Figure 3.1
Trends in lethality of lone wolf terrorism in the United States, 1940–mid-2016
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[ 38 ]
The Ame rican Lone Wolf Te rrorist
fi gures, and indeed, they have undeniably changed American history
through their violence. Several examples from the database make this cru-
