Others have said that "we don't know what the motive is." Well, maybe - but we are willing to bet a dollar against a doughnut that the motive of the killer has a lot to do with the fact that he was a radicalized Muslim who was inspired to do damage to America, its military and its institutions. And the fact that the targets of the killer were a military recruiting office and a reserve training center certainly fits in with the information released a few weeks ago that ISIS had encouraged attacks on military targets.
There is one major distinction between this attack and almost every other similar attack by a radicalized jihadi Muslim – in most cases, the killer turns out to be someone who was known to the authorities as a potential terrorist, someone who had a record, someone who had obvious connections to the terror network. However, in this case, the killer seems to be as “far off the radar” as could be possible; in the sense that law enforcement or intelligence agencies could not have been expected to have known who he was. As far as we know at this stage, other than a lengthy (several months) stay in Jordan – there were very few “red flags” to be found.
All the more reason, it would seem, to have protection at installations – because who knows from where the next threat will come? If the military installations attacked in Chattanooga were not “gun-free zones” and instead were protected by armed guards, perhaps the attacker would have been thwarted, perhaps some lives saved, or perhaps the attack would never have taken place at all. A disproportionate number of these attacks have occurred in “gun-free zones.” Until we find a way to have fewer terrorists, perhaps if we had fewer gun-free zones, we’d have fewer “soft targets” for terrorists to strike.