Now What?

Forgive me for being cynical but I don't think we'll see massive changes because of the attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine headquarters Wednesday. The first thing we learned is that strict firearms laws do not stop criminals from getting their hands on them. France has quite a number of firearms restrictions and the weapons used in the attack violated them.

Some reports stated that the first police on the scene were unarmed. I do not know that these were accurate since Wiki says they have a standard issue of semi-auto handguns. Clearly, however, the police were out-gunned by the bad guys who reportedly had AK-47s (or look-alikes) and at least one RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade).

I am not going to point fingers at gun law philosophy, though, it is pointless. What I want to concentrate is on terrorism and what can be done to combat it. Better intelligence can help as well as increased surveillance but these are problematic in free societies. The purpose of terrorism is to make the public afraid enough to tolerate police state tactics and governance. At least at first and then use that to foment unrest and rebellion against the state. That unrest and rebellion should provide opportunity for the terrorists to inject themselves into the fight (as ISIL has done in Syria) and provide them a chance to take over in any new regime.

But what will we, in the US, do?