On Sunday evening, two gunmen sought to reenact in suburban Dallas the horrors of January’s attack on French humor magazine Charlie Hebdo. That they failed to reach their target — a Mohammed-cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, sponsored by Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative — was thanks to the lethal aim of a nearby traffic cop. Because of the favorable conclusion to the incident (no one was injured except a private security guard, shot in the ankle), jokes about the quick-drawing esprit de Texas have been ubiquitous. But it is sobering to note the thin line that separated a happy ending from horror.
Elton Simpson, one of the two gunmen (the other has not yet been named), was a convert to Islam who had been the subject of an FBI terror investigation. In 2010 the Phoenix resident was convicted of lying to federal agents about his plans to travel to Somalia — a popular destination for aspiring terrorists. Recordings taken by a government informant revealed the extent of his religious fervor: “If you get shot, or you get killed, it’s [heaven] straight away.” Minutes before the Texas attack, Simpson reportedly tweeted that he and his fellow assailant “have given bay’ah to Amirul Mu’mineen” — that is, pledged allegiance to the “Commander of the Faithful,” a common title for Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The tweet featured the hashtag “#texasattack.”
Source: www.nationalreview.com