Many Injured in Explosions at Boston Marathon

Actually I if you had read the note , you would have seen I am responding to an inane ignorant posters rant. As a matter of fact I have see far more injuries from pressure cookers than gunshot related injuries in the ER Some have had to go to burn centers for follow up. It is tongue in cheek but in my line of work a little black humor is necessary for ones sanity.
 
Derail (well slightly) and a genuine question but can we call it a "terrorist" act yet with no group claiming responsibility or any agenda being put forward?

This is not semantics, because the measures to deal with a single sociopath are markedly different from thoe required to deal with a politically motivated attack.
 
Already said it was probably the wrong word to use. A disparity between how words are interpretated is one of the things you accept about the internet.


If you want to swear at me and get it out of your system my facebook account is linked to this one somewhere.




Its not about gun control as such. At this point I don't give a toss what America does about that. I simply want some consistency in outrage. 3 people being killed leads to nationwide cries for a crusade of justice and its being reported as if its one of the biggest terrorist attacks to ever strike the world. Multiple times that get killed in a long list of similiar incidents (doing a quick look on wiki if you take the dead, amputated and critical casualties its still only just more victims than Sandy Hook) and its been more or less swept under the rug in the international community, and the domestic one didn't have anywhere near the same united front of revenge either. I suppose I don't get why 20 kids aren't afforded the same level of anger and retribution as 3 other people are. Both were callous and unjustifiable attacks on innocents and had similiar body counts, yet for some reason one has had a far bigger outcry and united reaction than the other. I don't quite get why.

Also to be clear I'm not necessarily aiming all of this at you. Its my thoughts on the American reaction as a whole which you just happened to be a part of at the time I was thinking about it.
 
I can't speak for the UK press, but Sandy Hook was front-page news for months here in the US of A. It absolutely was NOT swept under the rug. There were angry debates about what could or should be done, with one side accusing the other side of not giving a damn about children because they wouldn't ban AR-15s, and the other side accusing the first side that they don't give a damn about dead children because they wouldn't support armed security in schools.

It's been the single biggest topic in the US news and the US policy debate scene for the past three months. I don't know where you got the idea that Americans were ignoring it, but that's simply NOT TRUE.

As for "retribution," the perpetrator of the Boston terror bombing is at large, possibly planning another attack. Adam Lanza, on the other hand, killed himself. So there was nothing left to be done in terms of "bringing the killer to justice." Of course there was no manhunt after Sandy Hook, because the killer was dead at the scene.
 
The act itself fullfills the requirements in terms of targets and methods. All that is in the balance is whether the motivation for the act is political or ideological in nature. claims or agendas are not specifically required to call something terrorism. Only methodology and motivation.
 
I'm thinking there might be some connection between this bombing and these recent events:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22178517

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22190031

Aslo, I just saw this on my FB feed:

http://www.dailydot.com/news/4chan-boston-marathon-bomber-photo-evidence/
 
Connection to the ricin mailings seems likely. I haven't heard of any such mailings since the anthrax mailings a decade or so ago, and two mailings to two government officials the same day as these two bombings? That's not a coincidence.

The 4-Chan "this guy has a black backpack with white stripes" thread is less interesting to me. There must have been thousands of backpacks present, many of them black. Calling anyone in the photos with a black backpack a potential terrorist is the same sort of knee-jerk reaction that led to the New York Post naming a Saudi national a "suspect in custody," when in fact he was one of the victims receiving treatment.
 
Yeah I wouldn't make too much of the 4-Chan thing, but you never know. Im interested to see how/if it will develops further with these netizens. This sort of stuff goes on in China quite a bit and it's got some interesting implications.
 
CNN is announcing that an arrest has been made. Not much in the ways of details yet.
 
Maybe the fact that bombers have to resort to less effective devices like IEDs rather than buying off the shelf actual devices designed to kill people is relevant to the terrible but few deaths at a mass bombing but the equally terrible yet much higher death toll at a school.

Mitch
 
You're judging the effectiveness of bombing versus shooting with a sample size of one on each side. Yes, there are bombings like this one where only a few people are killed (probably because the bomb was detonated outdoors instead of inside a building or vehicle, where bombs are most deadly). But there are also shootings where the perpetrator kills three or fewer people. For example, here in Oregon, the Clackamas Town Center shooting involved a gunman with an AR-15 rifle. It resulted in three fatalities (including the shooter) and one injury.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clackamas_Town_Center_shooting

The Clackamas Town Center shooting was far less tragic than the Boston Marathon bombing, with well over a hundred individuals with severed limbs and other ghastly shrapnel wounds.

Historically, bombings have proven to be more deadly weapons of mass killing than shootings have. America's worst act of domestic terrorism? Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people and injured over 600--with a bomb. America's worst school massacre? Fourty-four dead and 58 injured--from a bomb. The same is true in the UK. The 2005 London subway bombings were FAR worse than the Dunblane massacre, with three times the fatalities and over twenty times the total casualties. Same with the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings.

The same day as the Boston bombing, IEDs in Iraq killed 55 and injured 300. Barely even made the news because that sort of casualty count from IEDs is so common. Civil strife in Iraq and Pakistan has consistently shown that homemade bombs are more efficient devices of mass-murder than guns are.
 
No, that's not what I was doing at all

I was saying that improvised explosive devises are not as effective as specifically devised explosive devises.

In the same way, improvised guns or otherwise controlled guns are not as effective as otherwise uncontrolled guns.

You have to read it in relation to Connovar's post which I quoted

Mitch
 
What's the "equally terrible yet much higher death toll at a school" involving specifically-devised explosive devises that you were referring to then? I thought it was a reference to Sandy Hook and the AR-15, but you're talking about some bombing instead.

For what it's worth, Timothy McVeigh used an IED, not a specifically-designed bomb. 168 dead, 600 wounded from a mixture of fuel and fertilizer.
 
Between posts we've misunderstood and I apologise if mine was badly worded.

I was making a point in reply to Connovar's post about pressure cookers.

I imagine pressure cookers were used because anti-personnel mines were un available. This is fortunate because otherwise more people might have died.

I imagine that a parallel might be drawn with guns, whereby fewer people might have died in recent shootings if improvised or otherwise limited guns had been used.

I imagine you might argue against that parallel so I thought it was worth clearing up my meaning

Mitch
 
The lack of effectiveness of the devises makes me think that this is perhaps a homegrown terrorist event, that, and as you said before no one else is claiming responsibility. The thing is that if this continues I'm sure the quality of the devises will improve. Unfortunately there is little to be done to stop these attacks, other than being more aware of your surroundings. We all should take care to be mindful of anything that seems out of place, no matter what side of the pond your on.
 
It depends on how you gauge "effectiveness." The actual death toll was low, but the injuries were incredibly severe. There were numerous reports of traumatic amputations--arms and legs lying severed in the street. The New York Times profiled a doctor who had performed I think sixteen surgical amputations in a row, one after another, because of catastrophic limb injuries. When people say 180 people injured, it's easy to think of people getting stitches and being sent on their way, but that's not what the figure means here.

The bombing happened extremely close to some of the largest, best hospitals in the nation. If it had happened anywhere else, many more people would have died. People who would have died under any other circumstances were stabilized despite catastrophic injuries.
 
I guess I was comparing this to the Oklahoma City bombing that basically took out an entire building and killed hundreds, but still that kind of carnage is devastating, and unfortunately I know what the families are going through and what they will have to deal with with those types of injuries.
 
You're comparing a truck bomb to a satchel bomb. These were plenty effective for satchel bombs. If they'd exploded indoors and the nation's best hospitals hadn't been a mile or so away, the death toll would be in the dozens.
 
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