Sen. Sherrod Brown said Thursday that “generally white males” are responsible for terrorist attacks in the United States since September 11, 2001.
He pointed to mass shootings in movie theaters and schools, calling those “terrorist attacks — they’re just different kinds of terrorists.”
The Ohio Democrat made the comments in a Thursday interview with WAKR radio. Those remarks were then picked up by BuzzFeed.
Federal and local law enforcement agencies might have failed at keeping the United States safe “from crazy gunmen coming into schools and movie theaters sometimes,” Brown said, but those forces are “certainly keeping us safe from foreigners attacking this country.”
Brown said that the United States has largely been safe since the 9/11 attacks, and that “we trust the FBI and our security forces to do this right.”
“I mean, since the beginning of the Bush administration when we were attacked, September 11th, we’ve not had any major terrorist attacks in this country,” Brown said. “We’ve had individual crazy people, of normally, they look more like me than they look like Middle Easterners — they are generally white males — who have shot up people in movie theaters and schools. Those are terrorist attacks, they’re just different kinds of terrorists.”
He continued: “But we have since the early Bush days, when September 11th happened, through the rest of the Bush years, and through the almost six years of the Obama administration, we’ve kept this country safe.
“Individual people shouldn’t be fearful, because by and large our government, the federal government — people always talk obviously they don’t trust the feds, whatever — the federal government and local communities have done a pretty good job at keeping us safe,” he added. “Not keeping us safe from crazy gunmen coming into schools and movie theaters sometimes, but certainly keeping us safe from foreigners attacking this country.”