Terrorism 2015 Part 2 - The Impact on Americans

The Department of State's annual report on terrorism includes two aspects of terror; acts of terror that impact the globe as I posted in part one of this two part posting and acts of terror that impact private U.S. citizens located outside the United States as I will discuss in this posting.

To remind you, 11,774 terrorist attacks across the globe during 2015 resulted in the deaths of 28,328 people.  In addition, 35,320 people were injured and 12,189 were kidnapped or taken hostage.  Most of the attacks took place in five nations; Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nigeria.

Now, let's look at how terrorism impacted private United States citizens located in overseas locations.  These citizens include any U.S. citizen that is not acting in an official capacity on behalf of the United States government.  For example, U.S. military personnel are excluded while on active duty as are employees of the Department of State and other federal government agencies.  Members of U.S. government employees' households and U.S. citizens working for contractors hired by the United States government are considered to be private U.S. citizens.  The report notes that in the cases of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, it is nearly impossible to distinguish terrorist acts from normal forms of everyday violence in each nation making it difficult to acquire accurate data.

Here is a table showing terrorism-related deaths of private U.S. citizens during 2015 sorted by  the nation where the attacks occurred:

Here is a table showing terrorism-related injuries of private U.S. citizens during 2015 sorted by nation where the attacks occurred: 

As well, for completeness sake, there were no terrorism-related kidnappings of private U.S. citizens during 2015. 

The grand totals for 2015 are:

U.S. citizens killed overseas as a result of terrorism: 19

U.S. citizens injured overseas as a result of terrorism: 22

For every U.S. citizen that was killed overseas as a result of terrorism, there were 1,491 people of other nationalities that were killed by terrorists.  For every U.S. citizen that was injured overseas as a result of terrorism, there were 1,605 people of other nationalities that were injured by terrorists.

Data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) show the following total worldwide deaths of American citizens as a result of terrorism between 1995 and 2014:

Including perpetrators and excluding deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq (since the majority of them are combat-related), a total of 3503 American fatalities have resulted from terrorist acts between 1995 and 2014.  Since September 11, 2001, there have been 158 total American deaths as a result of terrorism, an average of 12 deaths per year.  If we add in 2015, according to the Johnston Archive, there were an additional 37 domestic terrorist-related deaths in 6 incidents (all but one involved the use of firearms), bringing the 14 year total to 195 which results in an average of just under 14 terrorist-related deaths annually since September 2001.

In closing, here is a graphic showing the number of firearm related deaths and injuries in the United States during 2015 according to the Gun Violence Archive:

Given the pervasive coverage that the mainstream media gives terrorist attacks that involve American citizens anywhere in the world but particularly when they are domestic, you'd never be aware of the fact that a total of 56 Americans were killed on a global basis by terrorism during 2015, 0.4 percent of the number of Americans that were killed by firearms during the same year.

Sadly, however, by using fear, governments around the world have validated their snooping into our private lives and claim that their actions are what has saved us from terrorism.