In Spain, a terror cell of 12 people managed to kill only 14 people. That's 1.16 victims per terrorist.
This is a pattern one notices elsewhere in Europe as well, that is, terrorist attacks that consist of people going on a minor rampage with knives, pistols, or cars, and only managing to kill a relatively small amount of people. For example, take Islamic terrorism in Europe since 2014: there's been 43 distinct attacks, and of all those, only 6 resulted in the deaths of more than 15 people. Of the remaining 37 attacks, the average number of victims per attack was only 1.8 deaths. Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_terrorism_in_Europe_(2014%E2%80%93present)#List_of_attacks
Of course I am ignoring non-lethal injuries, but what is the reason for these very ineffective attacks?
Some possible reasons perhaps:
- Terrorists don't actually want to kill many people, and often realize this during the actual act, so the attack is essentially "halted" by themselves.
- Terrorists are mostly idiots (hence why they are terrorists), and therefore incompetent at performing a job properly.
- People are largely well-prepared against terror attacks by now.