The Nature of Private Armed Security Guards to Terrorism within the State of Ohio - Dissertation Example

Before the period of the 1980s, the acts of terrorism that occurred were few but committed primarily by domestic terrors that were fighting for civil equality or against the Vietnam Conflict. In the 1980s, anti-abortionists blew up clinics, and Theodore Kaczynski became a one-man terrorist as he performed his crimes as the Unabomber for 18 years between 1978 and 1995. During the 1980s and 1990s, a trend began in which military bases were the targets of terrorist attacks and in 1993, Militant Islamics did damage to the World Trade Towers and were convicted of their crimes. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols committed a terrorist act against the government of the United States in Oklahoma City in 1995 by blowing up a federal government building (Scheb, 2011).

Theodore Kaczynski terrorized people for eighteen years. On May 25th 1978 Professor Buckley Crist of Northwestern University in Evanston Illinois opened the first package bomb sent by the Unabomber, leaving him injured but not killed as the package was not well constructed and was extremely amateurish. On May 9th, 1979, a student named John G. Harris at Northwestern examined a taped cigar box only to find a bomb exploding, leaving him with some minor injuries. Over the course of time, Kaczynski placed 16 bombs into the public, killing three people and injuring 23 (Ottley, 2012).

The topic of Ted Kaczynski is of interest, not because he was a crazy man committing crimes in a serial fashion against the United States, but in the fact that he may not have been crazy and acted in a way in which to change society. Ottley (2012) writes that one of Kaczynski’s fears is that he is viewed as insane. Terrorists’ acts are defined by the victims, but through the eyes of the terrorists, they are acts designed to create change. Kaczynski was targeting those members of society who were delving into the future of science and the industrialized society. Kaczynski believed that society was losing its foundation through the propagation of technology. While there are some scholars who believe that some of the principles he supported were well thought out and had some merit, no one believes he was justified to fight for his believes through violence. The point is, however, that when members of society seek change they often use violence as a means to instigate change (Enders & Sandler, 2012).

Previous to the events of 2001, laws had been established to fight terrorism both in foreign and domestic firms. The Omnibus Diplomatic Security and Anti-terrorism Act of 1986 defined the act of terrorism overseas in order to kill, conspire to kill or commit physical violence against a US citizen as a criminal act. The Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 came about due to the incidents in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in which federal authority was expanded and the act of facilitating a terrorist act either on foreign soil or domestic became a criminal act (Scheb, 2011). In other words, no matter what the ideology attached, it is illegal to help organizations that use terrorism as an act of social change.