John Cassidy: “Here’s a little mental experiment. Imagine, for a moment, that the Tsarnaev brothers, instead of packing a couple of pressure cookers loaded with nails and explosives into their backpacks a week ago Monday, had stuffed inside their coats two assault rifles–Bushmaster AR-15s, say, of the type that Adam Lanza used in Newtown. What would have been different?”
“Well, for one thing, the brothers would probably have killed a lot more than three people at the marathon… The second thing that would have been different is the initial public reaction. Most Americans associate bomb attacks with terrorists. When they hear of mass shootings, they tend to think of sociopaths and unbalanced post-adolescents.”
“Third, had the attack been carried out with assault rifles rather than explosives and nails, the gun-control bills that perished on Capitol Hill just two days after the Boston bombings may have met a different fate.”
Save to Favorites