But if you want to understand bureaucracy, apply Matthew 6:21: Where a government’s treasure is, there will its heart be. The National Counterterrorism Center has about 1,000 employees; the Internal Revenue Service has about eighty times that number. And many of our friends on the left say the IRS is under-staffed and under-funded.

Sometimes a killer comes from out of the blue, as in the case of the recent massacre in Las Vegas. But more often, that is not the case. After 9/11, our law-enforcement and intelligence agencies asked for a lot: organization of federal efforts under a new Department of Homeland security — done. Bigger budgets — done. Substantially invasive new powers of surveillance and oversight — done. We’ve got plenty of red-light cameras, and we routinely lock people up for being poor. We lock people up for legally transporting firearms. But we still routinely see acts of terror committed by SOBs on various federal SOB lists.