It gets problematic, though. We’ve had all these mass shootings where the shooter has a racist/misogynist/homophobic ideology and then also a few where there’s no discernible reason at all for the attack. The first case is clearly terrorism - there’s an ideology and goals - but grouping them with instances of the second case allow some to deny that, to pretend they’re all of the second type. So calling them all terrorism muddies the waters and hides the clear cases of traditional, textbook terrorism whose ideologies we need to fight.
When the government becomes fascist, enemies of fascism become “terrorists.” It’s not (just) a distraction against right-wing terrorism that they’re ideologically connected to (and, in some cases, directly inspire).
I wonder how that works. In many of these cases (e.g. Gilroy), the shooter kills himself when the cops show up, so that explains why they didn’t take him alive. Otherwise it could be a purely tactical consideration - when the cops show up, he might be in the midst of shooting, they might not have cover, and so they might be forced to shoot him and his white privilege gains him no protection.
