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The “shooting” term is starting to feel inappropriate for a planned attack on random people. If they were reported as “Terror attack in Texas” followed by “Terror attack in Dayton,” the throughline would be a lot clearer (and I think, more instinctively alarming).
“Shooting” suggests a conflict that escalated out of control or maybe a random episode. “Terrorism” suggests a shared malicious force or motive behind it all, which there certainly is, even before you get into the attackers’ ideology.
When you say “shooting,” people think “What was the motive?” and often “We’ll never know for sure.”
When you say “terror attack,” people think “The motive was to kill a lot of random people and cause public shock and fear,” which almost always is accurate.
When you say “terror attack,” people think “The motive was to kill a lot of random people and cause public shock and fear,” which almost always is accurate.
Conceptualizing this as terror could also change the politics. It’s much harder for politicians to ignore attacks by outside groups than to ignore random, unpredictable tragedy. Terrorism is political by nature - “Let’s not bring politics into it” is a harder dodge.
