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It’s no wonder that the US attorney for the Western District of Texas said Sunday that the man who drove 600 miles to kill 22 people in the ethnically diverse city of El Paso, Texas, was being treated as a domestic terrorist. But it’s a largely hollow statement: The shooter won’t be charged as a domestic terrorist.
For many reasons, domestic terrorism in the United States — largely committed by people ideologically tied to white nationalism and white supremacy — is viewed differently from the international variety and has no specific penalties under the law. This fact has been the source of anger on the left for years — after the Oklahoma City bombings, for example — but some prominent conservatives have now coalesced around the same thought.