I thought this was pretty good, if you didn't see it. Carrie in the HuffPo Just reminds me like what Patton Oswalt was saying in his post, that there are more good folks than bad, and that we should remember that.
This reminded me of a quote I read in the link below: <a class="postlink" href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323346304578424950102614148.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 14148.html</a>
Niether. A shooting is something a person can reasonably defend against when taken by surprise. I have a gun, they have a gun. It's a gunfight, we're going to shoot it out, and the person who can get inside the other guy's OODA loop faster wins. Since most active shooters are untrained fucksticks who's only training is playing video games and the odd trip to the shooting range, you have a decent chance of killing them or forcing a surrender when they are confronted with force. Bombs are different. Bombs are scary. To survive you need a combination of time, shielding, and distance. Even if you carry a gun and see the pre-event clues (wires, oversized clothes, odd behavior, 1000 yard stare, etc), you're still fucked. You really have two options with a bomber: shoot him (and it MUST be a headshot) or run. If you shoot him, you have to be close ( <15 yards) and inside the blast radius. If you run, you may not clear the radius in time. There's no fight, and no time to debate what you do. You have to decide what your decision is before the event ever happens and make peace with the fact that if you decide to fight back you are probably going to die. All of that is based on the big "IF" of you seeing the precursors to the event. More than likely your only warning will be a big boom. tl;dr - The more control you have over the outcome of the event, the less scary it is. IEDs offer little control outside of prevention so they are fucking scary (even to people who could otherwise defend themselves against an active shooter).
I disagree that you can really defend against a mass shooting like that. These things happen randomly, no one says that this event is likely to happen so prepare. So really once the event begins its sheer chaos until it ends somehow. It not one of the mass shootings (recently) has the shooter been disarmed/negated by someone in the crowd they're attacking. No one shot the Columbine/Aurora/Va Tech/Newtown shooters. So no, I don't think a person can reasonably defend themselves in a mass shooting event. If they mass shooting event were in military base then yes, its much less likely to cause carnage, however in public event I think its unlikely. For that to happen there'd have to be a one in a million chance someone in the crowd is prepared for that event, and then have the wherewithal to take care of the shooter without harming anyone else. Thats asking for a miracle really. I know the logic, I respect the logic, however its not pragmatic or realistic.
You'd think so. Don't worry, it's coming. It's just a little harder since the core issue that the usual suspects align themselves along isn't as clear cut as a shooting where you can your stroke gun control/gun rights boners to.
Very true, but we can still dread what's coming: the blame game. An entire marathon of wrongness spoken by people not even ACTUALLY educated in the field they bitch about (see again: pundits). Now that I read up about Alex Jones a little more, I'll say this: if you think he's right about lots of things, kill yourself. Seriously. Lean into the strike zone, and take one for the team. You are not helping society by following a "man" who claims he knows all this shit and has no political science degree (actually no degree at all) or any idea whatsoever. He claims the government committed the Oklahoma City bombing and he personally rebuilt the Branch Davidian church (claiming the government murdered the "peaceful" people inside). He's trying to make money and nothing more. A hack. A complete cunt praying on stupid people. And he's as "libertarian" as my nutsack. EDIT: I am shocked to find out this man is only three years older than me. He looks at least fifty.
We had CBC on the tv in the waiting room today. Went out and changed it to sports (and I do not watch or care about sports) because nobody wants to listen to that shit all day. Well, I don't. A teacher of mine was in the UK several years ago during the subway bombings. She told us that there wasn't much mention in the media of it. Something about British stoicism and how it was almost considered rude to bring up the bombings. Kind of wish there were a bit more of that going on.
In answer to toddamus, I tried to type this out earlier but it felt clumsy and poorly articulated, so I'll try again. In my mind, a shooting is frightening. Not always, but usually, a shooter is a mentally unstable person (or in the case of Columbine, a pair) who decides to cause pain and suffering on their way out of this world. In most cases, it's either a suicide or at least a contained event. That is, if a local high school has a shooting, no one would expect one to follow immediately at another local school. In an incident like this, there is clearly a lot more planning put into the act. Not to say Cho Seung or Klebold/Harris didn't plan, but this is another level of planning. The bigger part in my mind is that it is not a contained event. In contrast to the high school shooting example, there are more unknowns, and with an incident of this scale, especially with no known motive/suspect, the question looms of whether further attacks will follow. Overall, I think it comes down to the sheer scale of the attack mostly. I could flesh this post out further but I'm still not articulating well so there's no point. Also please for the love of Christ do not turn this thread into another fucking gun debate. Fuck that shit, take it to PM, it's fucking done to death. The method of attack was not a gun. It could not have been stopped by a gun. Anything involving a gun is as relevant to this thread as the color of my piss is to lunar exploration. Jesus fucking wept. THIS IS EVERY FUCKING PERSON ON TV/RADIO RIGHT NOW. He might be crazier than the rest, but it's not like he's any better a candidate for a bullet than Limbaugh or Morgan or any of the other fucks.
This. We had 50+ pages of it and it went nowhere. It's all pure speculation and no one is right. We don't need anymore of it.
They're saying now that the bombs were made out of pressure cookers with timing devices. Guess that makes "sense" (in as much as any of this "makes sense") -- take a large, readily-available devise that's designed to contain pressure, fill it up with a shitload of low grade explosives, then use the built-in timers to set it off. I'm just glad that whatever sick fuck did this didn't make a more complicated, more devestating bomb. One death, one injury, is too many. But he/she/them could have made it DRASTICALLY worse with just a little more effort. Also heard that ATF is at the Boston airport asking everyone leaving on planes for any pictures and video they may have from the race looking for evidence. That's a VERY smart decision.
Absolutely. It's about time time that the law started taking advantage of social media instead of giving it the label of a vigilante instigator. It did wonders for nailing some of those shitfucks in Vancouver two years ago. I have a hunch it will play a valuable tool in this as well.
Holy hell, if that is indeed the second bomb, its a wonder more didn't die. There are 3 women within 2 feet of that thing. What a fucking asshole this cuntbag is.
So the before after picture of the supposed bomb, how in the hell is the mailbox still standing and looks like its been hardly affected?
Well if it's a mailbox it's federal property right? So it's probably bolted to the ground. Also, if you look the box itself is burnt. Most of where you'd expect to see damage though, closer to the ground (if that's where the injuries are occurring as they're reporting), is all covered by the blurred out image from where the media deemed the image too graphic. Also some of the signs in the before and after pictures, especially those closer to the ground -- they're either bent, or removed all together. **edit** although reading some of the comments after that article, I'm not so sure now, or at the very least confused. On person mentioned looking at the shadows of the bag and how they don't quite match that of the surrounding structures. Another good point is that in the videos the second explosion does appear to be coming more from the store fronts, but that doesn't explain all the carnage along the fence line near the bag... I'm curious to know how much time passed between those two photos.