Could an attack like the one on Charlie Hebdo happen in the US?

People gather to take part in a unity rally Marche Republicaine on January 11, 2015 on the Republique square in Paris in tribute to the 17 victims of the three-day killing spree that ended on January 9. The killings began on January 7 with an assault on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in Paris that saw two brothers massacre 12 people, including some of the country's best-known cartoonists, and the hostage-taking of a Jewish supermarket on the eastern fringes of the capital, which killed four people.

Despite the security advances our country has made since 9/11, incidents like the bombing last year at the Boston marathon demonstrate that we're still vulnerable in many ways.

What are the chances that a homegrown terrorist could pull off an attack similar to the one on French magazine Charlie Hebdo, but on our shores?

Incidents like the bombing last year at the Boston marathon demonstrate that we're still vulnerable in many ways.

But there are unique reasons why relatively few terror attacks in Ameirca have been carried out by Muslim-Americans.

"Homegrown terrorists among Islamists have been pretty rare here," says Christine Fair, assistant professor in the Peace and Security Studies program at Georgetown University. "People tend to focus on the Islamists, but in our history we have the Unabomber, we have environmental terrorists, we have animal rights terrorists, we have Christian terrorists who have shot [abortion] doctors."

Fair also says Muslims in France are disenfranchised a way that could push them to drastic actions -- their patriotism is often questioned, many are not upwardly mobile and they are stigmatized because they arrived as laborers.

"In contrast, most of the Muslim communities that came to this country," she says, "they came here as skilled employees -- doctors, engineers, lawyers."

Fair also says French-Muslims are antagonized in ways that would be unimaginable in the US.

The cartoons by Charlie Hebdo, for example, didn't just criticize Islam but went in a direction that satire publications like The Onion wouldn't dare.

"I'm an atheist, and even I found those cartoons to be deeply offensive. They struck me as bigoted, they struck me as racist," says Fair.

"We do value free speech," she adds, "But there's a lot of problems in the ways Muslims are treated in France. Many of the things that the French state would be unimaginable here."