Gary LaFree is a professor of criminology at the University of Maryland and the director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, which is funded through the Department of Homeland Security. People might remember the attention START gained after deeming Boise, Idaho, one of the top targets for a terrorist attack.

What’s the greatest misconception Americans have about terrorism?

The biggest that Americans in particular have is a misconception about is how much terrorism is domestic versus transnational. After 9/11 there’s been a tendency to see major terrorist attacks as terrorist agents acting in foreign countries. But we’ve collected the most comprehensive database on terrorism (http://www.start.umd.edu/data/gtd/) and found that’s not necessarily true. For example, 95 percent of the attacks happening outside of the U.S. were domestic – Pakistani groups acting within Pakistan.