This is a bonus episode of the Daily Signal Podcast and I'm Kate Trinko.

I'm here with Robin Simcox, the Margaret Thatcher fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

Robin focuses here on research on terrorism and national security.

Thanks for joining us today, Robin.

Great to be with you.

All right, so the media is currently reporting that 49 at least have died in this horrible shooting in New Zealand

and another 20 are injured. Does that make this one of the highest death counts for this kind of act ever?

Well, it's a,'s a terrible act it's a large body count it's not the highest we've seen in the West in recent years but of course in terms of an attack on a mosque and certainly an attack in New Zealand where acts of terrorism are exceedingly rare,

it is a very significant and of course tragic incident.

So you mentioned that for New Zealand this is unusual.

Is this a new part of the world for this kind of action?

I mean, has New Zealand ever had a shooting comparable to this?

No it hasn't. I mean in the in the perpetrator of the attack was actually

Australian as well. There's a bit more there's a little more of a history in Australia with with terrorism, but New Zealand is is very quiet in comparison

And so there is of course a I I mean it's a extraordinarily disturbing development.

I think it's, sometimes we associate these acts of terrorism taking place in major cities,

so London or New York or Paris and of course

there's been a lot of attacks that have taken place in those cities but if you

look at some of the white supremacist attacks have taken place in recent years.

Obviously this attack in Christchurch, we had the attack in Pittsburgh,

in Charleston, South Carolina with Dylan Roof and of course in Oslo with Anders Breivac in 2011.

It's been in some of the locations that you wouldn't necessarily expect, not major population hubs.

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