It's a good question with probably more than one answer and I don't claim to know the answers. For one, there's always gun control. Whenever you have fake shootings there's always Obama talking about "these things don't happen in other countries" and discussion about whether or not anyone really needs an assault rifle or needs high-capacity magazines or whatever. This is true no matter who the shooter is - white, black or Muslim.

Then there's the police state. At every one of these events you usually see a huge police presence almost immediately, and they whip out the heavy gear. Even if you look at Sandy Hook, there were FBI guys in body armor with helmets and assault rifles - ridiculous. In Dallas they had a police bomb robot. In San Bernardino they had a huge armored vehicle which I think is called a Bearcat. In Boston they shut down an entire neighborhood and kept people on lockdown inside their homes just to look for a 19 year old kid. All of this accustoms people to seeing a very active and armed police force that can materialize instantly. Preparing them for martial law, in other words.

Then there's the justification for foreign war. Obama has bombed and drones the Middle East almost constantly since winning the Nobel Peace Prize, what a joke. Every time you see these Muslim terror attacks there is always some connection to ISIS, which is an imaginary bogeyman. This creates a pseudo-justification for all the warlike interventionism and tax money being poured into the military-industrial complex.

Then there's the motivation for keeping the population confused, angry, and scared. People have bitter arguments about these terror events across political parties and even within political parties. For example I already told you I'm opposed to Muslim immigration and I'm right-leaning for sure, but other people on the right sure like to call me a Muslim-defending retard conspiracy nut for pointing out these blaring inconsistencies with these attacks.

The truth is America just doesn't have very much domestic terrorism. It has to be fabricated and faked, so that we accept increased government surveillance and all the rest of that garbage.

These aren't all the reasons but they make sense to me. Like you said, they can also serve as distractions. The media makes a huge production of these things while more foreign military action goes unnoticed for example, and more fascist laws are passed sneakily while we're all arguing about the latest bombing or shooting.

Here's the most bizarre thing about it in my opinion:

The officer who allegedly shot the attacker and saved the day starred last year in a video release by the OSU Campus Safety department about active shooters on campus. In that video he put the guy down and handcuffed him right before the credits rolled. This is too big of a coincidence for me.

http://ijr.com/2016/11/745148-hero-officer-who-killed-osu-campus-attacker-was-featured-in-active-shooter-training-video-one-year-ago/

Here's a couple bonus interviews. This kid says he grabbed the blade of the knife and ducked to avoid being injured, and that his hand is cut and wrapped up, but never shows his hand. How easy would that have been? I believe anyone in real life would have at least lifted his hand in front of the camera.

Here's the only professor I can find who comments on the incident. He speaks about being thrown into the air by the car and it all seems really silly. He talks about injuries to his leg but shows no indication of being sore - you would think being thrown into the air by a car would at least cause bruised ribs - and for some reason he still has yellow hospital socks on. It's like that is supposed to be "proof" that he actually got injured.

There are several other goofy crisis actor sort of people associated with this event as well. Here's my favorite .

1.) It is police procedure to handcuff a suspect immediately when neutralized, even if he's obviously dead .

2.) The cause of death cannot be loss of blood, since I have lost more blood than that shaving. Adult males have at least 5.5 liters of circulating blood and the tiny amount you see here isn't enough to shake a stick at. Not only this, but it's neatly pooled with no trail or smears indicating a struggle had taken place. (I give them some bonus points for at least using a correct dark red color as they often do not.)

3.) The posture of the "dead body" is wrong; you can see him clearly propping his face up off the ground because no one wants to put their face where people spit. His legs are even folded nicely like he's lounging around, not like he was shot to death and fell completely limp into a willy-nilly contorted position.

I could also nitpick about other details here too, like the lack of ambulances. Often at this sort of thing you see police cars and firetrucks but no actual medical personnel or anyone receiving (real) medical treatment. They could simply be off screen, yes, but I haven't seen a photo of an ambulance yet.

Also, this appears (because of the angle and shitty image quality) to have been taken from a pole-mounted elevated security camera, which again begs the question of where is the other photos and CCTV footage we would see of any bit of a car attack, machete rampage, and police shootout? The way everyone is standing around with their thumbs up their butts doesn't indicate a true emergency either. Yes the threat is neutralized, but it looks more to me like they're blocking the road off to stage this photo than anything else.

When I get to work I can share another couple other things I've found as well as what I believe to be pretty close to the "smoking gun."

How is anyone still falling for these stupid false flag shooting drill propaganda fearporn productions?

Lookie what happened the day before: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/27/us/politics/obama-expands-war-with-al-qaeda-to-include-shabab-in-somalia.html?_r=0

Here's another terrible crisis actor who gets called out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVHUMwI1Qhg

Ohio State University just got an updated security surveillance system in the past few years, so I'm sure we'll get totally legitimate footage that confirms this CAR ATTACK any time now. http://www.10tv.com/article/ohio-state-university-expanding-use-surveillance-cameras-campus

I can find at least 3 things wrong with this photo. Can you?

http://www.dailystormer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/dead_jiggaboo_osu-618x824.jpg