Just Piper sends an important study our way.  We are accustomed to discussing al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, or al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, and so on.  It seems rather odd to be among the first to use the phrase “Al-Qaeda In the United States,” but with our failure to execute the war on the transnational Islamic insurgency, it was bound to happen at some point.

The study was done by the Henry Jackson Society, a British think tank, and includes a detailed statistical analysis of perpetrators of terror who were affiliated or associated with al Qaeda.  There are a lot of take-aways from this study, including how active Afghanistan and Pakistan are as havens for terrorists and their training camps.  The foreign threat has not disappeared regardless of what the administration is saying.  But knowledge of this fact should be coupled with knowledge of the local threat.

According to the new report, Al-Qaeda in the United States, of the 171 al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda-inspired terrorists who either committed acts of suicide terrorism in the U.S. or were convicted in U.S. civilian or military courts from 1997 to 2011, 54% were American citizens, and more than a third were born in the United States.  “Moreover, 36% of all individuals were U.S. born, indicating that these were citizens who had grown up in the U.S. rather than having moved there later in life.

This is important to us for a whole host of reasons, but let me focus briefly on just two.  First, while I have recently written about the potential for an apocalyptic shattering of the stability of American civilization due to governmental totalitarianism, there are other possible catalysts, one being attacks by groups of Islamic fighters (and we also know that Hezbollah cells are already embedded in American civilization).  Several well-placed attacks on infrastructure will cause the American economy to screech to a halt.  Shooting attacks on shopping malls will bring retailers to their knees across America.

But there is yet another, more insipid, attack that could happen on our freedom and liberty.  In the event of an attack such as I’ve described above (or a series of attacks), the U.S. government might (and probably will) use it as the expedient to declare martial law, and include firearms confiscations as the central policy of that control.  This might be done by the federal government, or it might be done by Governors of states (recall that gun owners had their firearms confiscated in New Orleans after Katrina).

The point is this.  There are a number of different catalysts for societal instability and the consequent push for totalitarian control.  Be wise and circumspect, and be prepared for any exigency.