A tale of two terrorists

So the failure of an underpants bomb on an airplane has led to a massive rethinking of our entire approach to airline security, as well as our intelligence analysis. Conservatives think it should also prompt us to rethink closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and keep terrorism trials out of federal courts.

And yet, today we are reminded that the nation was far less galvanized by a more successful act of recent terrorism. Because today:

James W. von Brunn, who was accused of fatally shooting a security guard at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington in June, died on Wednesday at a hospital in North Carolina, near the federal prison where he was being held. He was 89.

Von Brunn actually killed someone, unlike the underpants bomber. He committed an act of terrorism in our nation's Capitol, inspired by the vitriol of right-wing radio and the anti-Semitic and white supremacist views promoted by certain religious extremists.

We put him in a federal prison and made plans to prosecute him in civilian courts. We didn't take any (publicly announced) steps to increase scrutiny of members of religious or political groups with similar views to von Brunn's. We didn't speculate that holding him in a civilian prison on US soil would create a magnet for domestic terrorists. We didn't ponder alternatives to civilian courts out of fear that von Brunn would use a court trial to mount a soapbox and proclaim his noxious views.

More significantly, we didn't take steps to make it harder to buy, possess, or transport rifles like that which von Brunn used to attack the Holocaust Museum. We didn't declare that any object with rifled grooves was forbidden from entering airports, as we blocked liquid explosives by forbidding all liquids.

I'm not necessarily saying we've uniformly over-reacted to the underpants bomber (though we have over-reacted in at least some ways). I just wonder if we have under-reacted to von Brunn's terrorist act?