POLITICAL VIOLENCEPolitically Motivated Violence Is Rare in the United States
A total of 3,599 people have been murdered in politically motivated terrorist attacks in the United States from 1 January 1975 through 10 September 2025 (this figure includes the 2,979 killed on 9/11 by foreign terrorists). If we include the 9/11 victims, then murders committed in attacks by foreign and domestic terrorist account for about 0.35 percent of all murders since 1975.
Charlie Kirk, the co-founder of Turning Point USA, was assassinated while speaking at an event in Utah on September 10. The police have not arrested a suspect, but the assassin was likely motivated by political disagreements with Kirk. Politically motivated murder is unacceptable and inherently bad, like all murder, and doubly so because of how socially corrosive it is. The harm is personal: Kirk is gone, and he leaves behind a wife and two children, relatives, and friends. The harm is public because so many people admired him. Politicians and pundits across the political spectrum have condemned Kirk’s killing, with some variation in quality and a small chorus of social media accounts praising the crime. Politically motivated murder is very uncommon in the United States.
A total of 3,599 people have been murdered in politically motivated terrorist attacks in the United States from January 1, 1975, through September 10, 2025. Murders committed in terrorist attacks account for about 0.35 percent of all murders since 1975. Only 81 happened since 2020, accounting for 0.07 percent of all murders during that time, or 7 out of 10,000. Terrorism is the broadest reasonable definition of a politically motivated murder because it is the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a nonstate actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through coercion, fear, or intimidation. That excludes individual hate crimes, which are frequently difficult to distinguish from terrorism but are often more personal and spontaneous.
Eighty-three percent of those murdered since 1975 were killed by the 9/11 terrorists (Figure 1). The Oklahoma City Bombing accounts for about another 5 percent. Those murdered since 2020 account for just 2 percent. Terrorists inspired by Islamist ideology are responsible for 87 percent of those murdered in attacks on US soil since 1975 (Table 1). Right-wingers are the second most common motivating ideology, accounting for 391 murders and 11 percent of the total. The definition here of right-wing terrorists includes those motivated by white supremacy, anti-abortion beliefs, involuntary celibacy (incels), and other right-wing ideologies.
Left-wing terrorists murdered 65 people, or about 2 percent of the total. Left-wing terrorists include those motivated by black nationalism, anti-police sentiment, communism, socialism, animal rights, environmentalism, anti-white ideologies, and other left-wing ideologies. Those murders that are politically motivated by unknown or other ideologies are a vanishingly small percentage, which is unsurprising because terrorists typically want attention for their causes.
