Are all mass shooting acts of terrorism? It’s an important legal question; insurance claims may be denied if the venue is not covered for terrorism (which is frequently not a covered event in standard “all risks” policies). I know a little about real estate, and suspect one legitimate reason authorities think twice before assigning a terrorism attribution is that it can result in $millions in uncovered claims for the unfortunate property owner.
“Terrorism” is a word bandied about in situations that usually involves some political cause. But the thing is, a “terrorist” attack is an attack that is intended to “terrorize” more than harm.
For example, if you hate your next door neighbors and kill their dog and leave its remains on the front doorstep, that could be a form of terrorism. If you simply kill the whole family, that is not terrorism.
If you start shooting indiscriminately into a large crowd of people, fully knowing it will cause mayhem, and also knowing you will only injure or kill a tiny fraction, that is a terrorist activity that terrorizes a large group by injuring a small subset.
People get too wrapped up in the reason for the terrorism. But all that does is qualify it. There is religious terrorism and there is political terrorism, and there is plain old “like to scare the crap out of people” terrorism.
So far, this seems to be the latter.
The important thing to note is that it need not be religious OR politically motivated to be terrorism.
“Are all mass shooting acts of terrorism?”
Not necessarily. Sometimes they just want to go out being famous