Bombs vs Bullets
New Yorker writer John Cassidy has posted a fascinating, provocative and important piece on the magazine’s website, entitled, “What If the Tsarnaevs Had Been the ‘Boston shooters’?” He posits that had the Boston Marathon bombers used assault rifles instead of homemade bombs, killing even more innocent people than they did, the law enforcement and public reaction would have been completely different. We would have considered the brothers “sociopaths and unbalanced post-adolescents” rather than “Islamic extremists.”
Mr. Cassidy goes on to sketch out how the perception of risk would have been completely different, something we have been talking about as recently as our last posting.
A serious analysis of the implications of this counterfactual premise can be enlightening.
Cassidy stated: “Set off in a public space a couple of crude, homemade bombs that you appear to have made using a recipe on the Web, and the state will make you Public Enemy Number One. To ensure you are caught and punished, there are virtually no lengths to which the authorities won’t go. They’ll assemble a multi-agency task force overnight, calling on some of the enormous investments in hardware, intelligence, and manpower that have been made since 9/11. They’ll haul in anybody who might be remotely connected to the crime scene, and, if necessary, shut down an entire city. Once you’re caught, they’ll interview you in your hospital bed without reading you your legal rights and then charge you with using W.M.Ds. If you weren’t born in this country, there will even be talk about changing the immigration laws.
“If you systematically shoot a classroom full of defenseless six-year-olds and blow off your own head, things proceed rather differently.”
There’s no denying the insight of Mr. Cassidy’s commentary. And it underscores our own observation that we have a largely irrational system of calibrating potential threats and the emotional, financial and human resources we are willing to devote to counteracting them. But his article is even richer in its implications.
For one, the choice of bombs over guns tells us something fundamental about the behavioral profile of the Tsarnaev brothers. Yes, they could have killed considerably more people had they used assault rifles with large magazines. But they would not have gotten away. Mass murder by firearm requires you to stand there and shoot. Planting a bomb allows you to drop and scram. No wonder most mass shooters leave the scene of their carnage feet first, either by their own hands or suicide-by-cop. Most bombers have to be hunted down and caught. The first weapon requires a certain kind of depraved bravery. The second is among the most contemptibly craven crimes that can be committed.
The second point may be even more significant as we come to terms with the ubiquity of small scale terrorism. Our FBI sources have been telling us for a long time that the Bureau has been worried about just this kind of tactical shift as far back as the D.C. Sniper case of 2002. In that incident, an entire region was terrorized for nearly a month by what turned out to be two murderous but marginalized jerks with a rifle and a handful of bullets.
In other words, you don’t need an airplane and a big building, or even a rudimentary knowledge of bomb making to create terror. All you need are some basic sniper skills or the willingness to give up your own life for whatever your misguided cause happens to be.
Despite the NRA’s predictably hard line on anything having to do with the Second Amendment, the public seems to be thinking it all through and carefully and responsibly evaluating each side of the guns vs. safety equation.
And if guns do become the weapon of choice for terrorists, that equation could change very quickly.
