Sociological Theories Of Domestic Terrorism

National terrorism has been the focus of attention since September 11 (Haubrich, 2006). Unfortunately, domestic terrorism is now becoming increasingly common with hate groups around our nation. Domestic terrorism can be defined as violent acts that someone has committed in their own country against their fellow citizens and infrastructures. Some examples of violent acts include violent crimes, (murder, assault, and etc.) property crimes, and public order crimes. It can also be a crime against the state or federal government, like for example the attack on the World Trade Centers and the infamous Oklahoma City bombing. There are four important things to know about, which are social control, deviance, roles and social structure. Every civilization

Two theories that probably relate the best are the interactionist and the conflict theorist. The interactionist is primarily concerned with fundamental or everyday forms of interaction, including symbols and other types of nonverbal communication. One of the main assumptions of the interactionists, which directly relates to this article, is that we act according to our own interpretation of reality. The people and domestic terrorist groups described in this article all act the way they do because their interpretation of reality is to wipe out e.g. the government, or other groups of people. They are manipulating symbols and are creating their social worlds through interaction with other group members. They have nonverbal communication with us by the terrorist acts they perform. As opposed to the functionalist and conflict theories, the interactionist sees people disobeying the law because of their own past experiences. The next theory is the conflict theory, which assumes that social behavior is best understood in terms of conflict or tension between competing groups. This relates to the article because the two groups are our nation and the domestic terrorist groups. They believe that people are shaped by power, coercion, and authority. This relates to the deviant people and the domestic terrorist groups in the article because most of the groups have leaders which are figures of

The dependent variable is planned and/or committed crimes. The independent variable is whether they are in a domestic terrorist group or not. To study the dependent variable a survey could be used in which local, state, or federal law enforcement organizations would be contacted to find out how many people were arrested over a certain amount of time, and how many of those arrested planned and/or committed crimes that were labeled as domestic terrorism. This study would have more general questions. How many arrests were made? Of the arrests how many crimes were planned? How many committed? Would this crime qualify as domestic terrorism? To study the independent variable, another, more specific survey could be conducted in which the crimes labeled as domestic terrorism would be looked over more specifically to see if the crimes were planned and/or committed by people in a domestic terrorist group or not. Furthermore, we could see if the possibility of the person being in a domestic terrorist group was even considered by the law enforcement organization that apprehended them. This study would show more specific questions. Of the arrests made how many of the domestic terrorist crimes were group related? Of the arrests made how many were there in which