Number of lone-wolf terrorist attacks in U.S. not rising, but police are targeted more often

media-driven paramilitary or “Rambo” culture; however, less than a third of them have actual military experience and none fought in Afghanistan or Iraq, Hamm said.

The research is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice, and Hamm’s database will be turned over to the government for public use.

Assisted by what Hamm jokingly describes as his “Sherlock Homies” (a play on the fictional investigator’s name), he and his team started by examining nonety-eight cases between 1940 and 2013 and analyzed the data for twenty-one variables, producing 2,058 searchable characteristics. It is the largest database ever created on lone wolf terrorism.

While the quantitative review is complete, Hamm continues to work on the qualitative aspect, conducting prison interviews where possible. This phase of his research will fill the holes that statistics canot tell, he said. For instance, in the late 1960s, relatively few people were killed by lone wolf terrorists — among them the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.

“We have no statistic to measure the political loss of those two men,” Hamm said. He describes King as “the conscience of the civil rights movement,” and Hamm met Kennedy on the Indiana State campus in 1968, several weeks before he was assassinated.

Today, even the Islamic State (ISIS) has links to lone wolf terrorism and prisoner radicalization.

“You don’t come out of your mother’s womb a terrorist,” Hamm said.

ISIS is the “9th, 10th, 11th, 12th-order effect of prison radicalization” and traces its roots to the former Jordanian prisoner Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed by the United States in 2006, Hamm said. His followers formed the group after his death.

A big concern for the U.S. State Department and the FBI is Americans who identify with radicals such as ISIS.

“The influence of the Internet is remarkable,” Hamm said.

While the practice of beheading someone is an ancient punishment in the Middle East, YouTube is new technology. Broadcasting the brutal event fulfills the definition of terrorism: “Kill one, frighten 10, 000,” he said.

“This is the thing about terrorism — it affects an entire community. That’s why we’re so concerned about it,” Hamm said.

Domestically, attacks on the power grid are the next big threat, Hamm said. Lone wolf terrorist Jason Woodring successfully downed the electric transmission system of rural Arkansas in 2013. His vandalism affected 10,000 people and cost $3 million in repairs.

A widespread attack could take two years to correct, Hamm said, and in the meantime, “we go back to cave man days.”