That's what I told one of my coworkers up there a few days ago, back when it was just along the east side of I-35. That's a historically minority side of town, so I said I thought it was an ex-military guy who is white supremacist or otherwise has a thing against minorities. Which, because Texas, narrows it down to about a quarter of the state's population. They're now saying that the device tonight was not a bomb but rather an incendiary device. They're doing the "we have no proof it was related" deal right now, but... duh. So that would make it a fourth type or method of killing device if related. Dude knows what he's doing. That's for sure.
It’s definitely not routine terrorism MO. Usually that’s one or two good explosions or a big shooting. These are small with few if any casualties and some injuries. Also normal terrorists like to leave some sort of message explaining motive. This is just some random violence with no real pattern.
The rapidity with which these are going off is also really weird. I think it has to be either someone unemployed (like a recent military vet) or a group (like a white supremacist or militia group). Similar to the bridge collapse thing, I find it interesting and educational to dig into the details we have now -- it doesn't hurt, this message board is for entertainment after all -- and then once we know the answers do a post-mortem on where our theories were right and wrong.
Where are you getting that this is some sort of expert or pro explosives guy? My guess is that it's some redneck-ish, maybe racist and fresh out of high school kid, who's just making shit up as he goes. (Early reports were that targets were high standing people of colour). This kicked off during SXSW, so I'm guessing it's someone who hates the number and type of people that show up for that event. The different types of explosives might be because none of them have been all that effective, so he keeps trying something different to try and get a better result... not some major grand scheme or plan. Occam's razor and all that.
The first 2 victims were black. But then he set up another device with a trip wire so any random person could set it off. Most of the talking heads/LEO experts think this guys a pro. They all seem to think it’s a guy as well. Some of the profiles seem to think this person doesn’t want to be looked at like some racist shit kicker. But as an equal opportunity person hater.
Yeah, that's kind of where I'm coming from. We ascribe some Hollywood-level movie skills to a lot of people who don't really know what the fuck they're doing. I guess I'm just cynical enough these days to not believe the hype.
It was an incendiary device that turned out to be a flare in a box of donated military momentos? Is it possible that this was just a freak accident that occurred during the evil, ex-military white supremacist bombing campaign in Austin? Or was it simply a very clever bombing sortie conducted by the evil genius?
Sounds like they had been tracking him for a few days, they followed him to a hotel in round rock, when he left swat closed in and he decided to blow himself up then.
They released the identity, its some 23 year old white kid. Lets see: Texas, white, home-schooled, shut-in, keeps a freedom blog. This reeks of sovereign citizen bullshit. Those people are absolutely insane.
This part of Texas has a lot of military bases, and a lot of ex-military crazies. The 2015 Waco biker shootout should ring a bell. Given that, and what was being reported in the media at the time, it was a reasonable guess. Here's the asshole's blog, if anyone was interested. It was linked via an NBC News article, so this is information that's already out there. Last post was from May 2012 though. *edit* fixed the second link, thanks @toytoy88
The vast majority of armed forces personnel are not explosives experts... a large part of them are cooks, bus drivers, etc., who can barley fire a rifle never mind whip up explosives. I would expect an "explosives expert" to do a much better job with what was being attempted... that's what struck me the most. If the guy had skills, my thinking was that he'd have been way better at blowing shit up than he was. My overall impression was that it was someone who was kind of making it up as they went, not an expert falling back on years of training.
Given his age he hasn’t had much time to become an expert in anything, much less bombs. Before there was the Anarchist Cookbook, nowadays Google can teach you how to become a bomb-building terrorist. I remember years ago there was a controversy where an episode of MacGuyver showed how to make an explosive using fertilizer. Well, some impressionable kid impersonated it and packed a homemade bomb into his BMX handlebars. Murphy’s Law. Boom. He was killed instantly.