The use of the word “terrorism” in the news  is becoming more and more common and is televised every day. Due to recent terrorist attacks it is at times making it more difficult to classify a shooting as committed by someone mentally ill or to label it as an act of terrorism. To be mentally ill is to have a psychologic disorder, while terrorism is defined as the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.

Today’s consumers of news are all so used to deaths and now it seems we’re about to get used to terrorism.

Today the biggest group that is responsible for many deaths in the Middle East, France and others is the infamous group ISIS. “The UN concluded that in the first eight months of 2014, at least 9,347 civilians had been killed and at least 17,386 wounded. While all these deaths are not attributable to ISIS alone, ISIS is identified as the primary factor,” reports The Daily Beast.

This is the same group that beheaded an American reporter and posted it on the Internet, along with threatening to attack the U.S..

ISIS has made numerous statements, threatening“We will strike America at its heart” and stating that they have terrorists in the United States. 47% of Americans believe the country is less safe now than before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,” according to NBC News. The perceived threat of terrorism has steadily grown since September 11, 2001. According to the same NBC News survey, “Just 26% of Americans now feel the nation is safer than before 9/11.”

Senior Franklin Soto says he is not worried about the threats from ISIS, “ If we live in fear we are going to be exactly like we were post 9/11, fearing many that did not have anything to do with it. We should be more like France, instead of fighting fear with war, fight them with love.”

Even so, the Internet and social media have become a major platform for ISIS to spread their propaganda., “A top FBI counterterrorism official told Congress this year that ‘hundreds, maybe thousands’ of people in the U.S. follow ISIS online. And this year alone, at least 49 alleged ISIS ‘supporters’ in America have been charged with related crimes. The largest number of those were in New York,” reports CNN.

“I feel like [terrorism] is more propaganda based, that they are trying to lure us in with a sense of fear…Terrorism is used for those in Islamic states, people that take that religion to an extreme,” said Soto.

According to a statement released by terrorism specialist Jerome P. Bjelopera for the American  House of Representatives.since Sept. 11, 2001, over 250 people have been convicted for acts of terrorism in America, “for their involvement in homegrown violent jihadist plots,”

There are so many terrorist attacks post 9/11, so much that it is hard to decipher a mass shooting between a terrorist attack. The lines blur and the debate rises. Soto said, “Terrorism is to cause terror, and a mass shooting, or a school shooting does exactly that; It’s terrorism.”