Am I Going to be Killed By a Muslim Terrorist?

Has the whole world gone crazy?

Today, Friday, July 15, 2016, the world is reverberating in the wake of a presumed Muslim ISIS terrorist killing 84 people on Bastille Day in Nice, France, mowing them down with a truck. Donald Trump says "It's War". Newt Gingrich says we should test every Muslim and deport all that say they follow Shariah law.

Terrorism is designed to get its target population to change the way they live. I get that some people are scared. The way that the media continuously rebroadcasts these events pushes them into everyone's mind. But what is the risk? How likely are we to be killed by terrorists? Should we change the way we live, indeed, give up our basic principals, based on the risk these terrorists pose?

Here is a table for the last 5 years of terrorism related attacks in the U.S.

Year	Total Attacks in the U.S.	Total Fatalities in the U.S.	U.S. Fatalities in the U.S.	U.S. Fatalities in the World
2010	17	4	4	6
2011	9	0	0	3
2012	13	7	6	12
2013	16	7	5	13
2014	19	18	17	32
Total	74	36	32	55
Average	14.8	7.2	6.4	11.0

Even when you go back to 9/11, 3,066 Americans have been killed in terror attacks from 9/11 through 12/31/2014.

Compare that with 42,773 Americans who commit suicide every year.

Let's look at the same period for drug-related deaths:

Year	Prescription Drug Deaths	Opioids	Benzodiazepines	Illicit Drug Deaths	Heroin	Cocaine
2010	22,134	16,651	6,479	8,408	3,036	4,183
2011	22,810	16,917	6,872	10,284	4,397	4,681
2012	22,114	16,007	6,524	11,641	5,925	4,404
2013	22,767	16,235	6,973	14,775	8,257	4,944
2014	25,760	18,893	7,945	17,465	10,574	5,415
Total	115,585	84,703	34,793	62,573	32,189	23,627
Average	23,117	16,940.6	6958.6	12,514.6	6,437.8	4,725.4

More people are dying due to drug overdoses by far. But OD'ing is something you can control: just don't do it. Terror is something that happens out of the blue.

How about some other causes of death?

Year	Lightning	Workplace Death
2010	29	4583
2011	26	4,693
2012	28	4,628
2013	23	4,585
2014	26	4,821
Total	132	23,310
Average	26.4	4,662

Any unwanted death is a tragedy. We spend a considerable effort to try to prevent any unwanted death. And we should work hard on eliminating terror attacks. But we don't change our way of life, give up our basic rights, question our fundamental beliefs. We do our best to prevent what we can and go about our business.

Our founding fathers were of differing religious beliefs. What they wanted was to be left to worship the way they wanted, free of the state questioning them about their religion. We need to worry more about politicians wanting to look into religion than we do about terrorists. In revolutionary America a standing army was a bad thing, because of the temptation for the state to use it to repress the people. Our founding fathers new that war was a terrible thing, the very last choice when all other means had been exhausted. We need to worry more about politicians who want to start a war when anything bad happens than we do about terrorists.

America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. Maybe it is time we start showing a bit more bravery in the face of terrorists. And maybe it is time we worry more about our freedoms than we do about being killed by Islamists (or white supremacists or black protestors or Mexican drug cartels or any of the "others" that alarmists might throw in our face).

Am I going to die at the hands of a terrorist? Most likely not. But I would like to hear a candidate that has a plan to save me from lightning.