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Boston Marathon Bomber Charged With Using 'Weapon of Mass Destruction'
New submitter bunkymag writes "Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has now been indicted on over 30 charges relating to his part in the Boston Marathon bombing. Of particular note however is a charge of using a 'Weapon of Mass Destruction.' It's a bit out of line with the commonly-held perception of the term, most notably used in justifying the invasion of Iraq. However, U.S. criminal law defines a 'weapon of mass destruction' much more broadly, including virtually any explosive device: bombs, grenades, rockets, missiles, mines, etc. The question arises: is it wise for Tsarnaev to face such a politically-loaded charge? From an outsider perspective, it would seem easy enough to leverage any number of domestic anti-terror laws to achieve anything up to and including the death penalty if required. Why, then, muddy the waters with this new WMD claim, when the price could be giving further ammunition to groups outside of America that already clearly feel the rules are set up to indict them on false pretenses, and explicitly use this sense of outrage to attract new terrorist recruits?"
They could charge him with a felony parking violation. What difference does it make? Not that I'm sympathetic to the bomber. Just sayin'.
Should it not be weapons of Mass. destruction?
Or perhaps just weapons of MA destruction?
I dont have a problem with the term being used. it is a legitimate term. The bombs did in fact cause "mass destruction" therefore he did use a weapon of mass destruction. Having said that he should simply be hung in the center of boston when this is all over with, i dont care what they call it as long as he is left lifeless in the end. If he gets a life sentence instead of death I can just see the riots that will break out in boston
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
but I'd be afraid that I'd be audited.
By this new definition of "Weapons of Mass Destruction", Saddam did have WMD's and they were in Iraq.
sudo make me a sandwich
So according to the government's own definition the U.S. military not only owns, but uses weapons of mass destruction, probably on a daily basis? I thought they raided Iraq, because the just owned such weapons. This definition is ridiculous!
If this bomb was a weapon of mass destruction then it turns out Bush was right! Iraq totally had WMDs. See, the whole war on terror is justified.
So there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after all!
If you're going to just make up definitions to make things sound worse, why not call him a pedo as well and charge him for that too?
Seriously, the guy's a murderer plain and simple and deserves to be locked up for the rest of his life. But a conventional bomb simply is not a weapon of mass destruction unless you want the term to have no meaning.
Nukes are WMDs. Chemical weapons fit the bill, as do biological ones. Possibly a really huge conventional bomb could reach that (e.g. a daisycutter in a populate d area), but a bomb set off in a crowd which kills 5 people? That's not even remotely a WMD.
The stupidity of this burns, frankly.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Well, that means the US and the UK were correct - Iraq *did* have weapons of mass destruction, it had millions of such weapons. Infact, pretty much every country has them.
In sane-land, this is ridiculous. If it wasn't, how about the US stop blocking the extradition for all the IRA terrorists and money men the UK have been seeking for the past 40 years?
By this new definition of "Weapons of Mass Destruction", Saddam did have WMD's and they were in Iraq.
I didn't though of that. Maybe the government is pulling a "Romney" in trying to find a casus belli for that war fiasco retroactively :P
Killing 3 people and maiming 234 using explosives and shrapnel counts as mass destruction in my book. Thanks for asking, though.
Then charge him with three counts of murder and 234 counts of attempted murder. Does it really matter that this was done with explosives? Would you feel better if he stabbed 237 people to the same effect?
I suppose then that the 4th of July is just one big WMD-fest.
We don't charge those guys, we push a button in Nevada and watch them go boom. I don't think anyone joining these groups at this point realistically imagines being captured and taken to trial in America. We've got a few hundred dudes in Cuba who aren't event charged, much less getting a trial. I'm sure they'd love a WMD charge if it got them in front of a judge.
Every one of us has the makings for weapons of mass destruction in our kitchen.
In light of recent NSA leaks, it makes sense they would sensationalize everything they can. Not only to distract you, but also to criminalize you.
Without more "enemy combatants," they're running out of ways to justify their existence. They're attempting to make more.
As an online discussion of different legal definitions of illicit human behavior grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, and the definition of "sex" approaches 1. When such an event occurs, the person guilty of invoking Clinton's Law has effectively forfieted the argument.
I wouldn't worry about that. We could give ponies to crippled children and that would somehow be used to recruit terrorists.
Everyone should read it. At least the commentary about how information can be misused to stir up the masses and move society in one direction or another.
[Begin Rant]Unfortunately, that's were "we" have gone with terrorism. It isn't enough to call someone a terrorist. No they used "weapons of mass destruction" because it sounds more terrifying. It isn't enough to call a robber a robber any more either. No, we've starting calling them terrorist now. Anything to arouse the masses and get them worked up.
It feels like the same thing is going on with the latest flu or viral "epidemics". The latest economic news. It doesn't end.[End Rant]
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
I suspect this is another instance where the Federal prosecutors are thinking of primarily domestic considerations. If they bring the biggest and most impressive-sounding charges they can, then all the surveillance powers and generally noxious government behavior seem more justified. It pays to keep the public scared: it keeps the "homeland security" budget super-sized and it makes the Federal prosecutors look and feel bigger than they are. Both of those outcomes are good for their careers.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
You know why prosecutors are immune from prosecution? So they can afford to be just.
But this is how US prosecutors operate at all levels: they always throw the book at the suspects like its spaghetti against a wall. Whatever your alleged crime is, it is going to escalate quickly within the offices of the prosecutor. Forgot to return the pen you borrowed to sign the check you used to pay for groceries at Walmart, and walked out with in? No, you won't get charged with shoplifting... expect a charge of grand larceny.
wonder if the Colorado gun man gets charged as such too.
"killing 12 people and injuring 58 others"
Isn't a nuke the only actual weapon of "mass" destruction? A conventional bomb may rearrange a lot of matter, but you still have the same total mass you started with. A nuke's the only thing that actually destroys mass/matter..
Well, it seems that the US now has a casus belli to invade pretty much any country that has a factory producing pressure cookers. Look out, Ecuador!
No left turn unstoned.
Would you feel better if he stabbed 237 people to the same effect?
But then his knife would be a weapon of mass destruction!
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
Try the guy on 3 counts of murder, a bazillion of attempted murder, and throw in a few parking tickets and douchbag haircut crimes as well. The legal system already accounts for people like this, no need to layer on another helping of hysteria and chest-beating.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
If setting off a small home made bomb qualifies as using a WMD, then every grenade toss by both sides in Syria
must also qualify as using WMDs, and every rocket launched by any side qualifies as using WMDs, and every
rocket launched from a Huey or Apache qualifies as using WMDs, don't even think about ground based or naval
artillery or bombs dropped from planes.
My Gawd ! Most of the US armed forces ( not to mention the military of every other nation ) are guilty of using
WMDs ! What's next, when my dog lets off an SBD, she's guilty of using a WMD. Well she certainly has a mass
effect on everybody in the room.
If killing people in a crowd is a weapon of mass destruction, then the shooting off of guns into a crowd by police in combating riots are all weapons of mass destruction.
Indeed, demolition of buildings require bombs blown up in cities. So your companies are using weapons of mass destruction.
And your government is using them in Iraq.
And if you're going to count the number dead, then three is enough to count as "mass" now???
It's all bullshit.
The USA either thought or didn't think that Saddam had WMD - they went in anyway.
The USA and everyone else knows full well that Kim not only has nukes but threatens to use them..and doesn't do jack shit about it.
Did someone say Bush Oil ?
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
"Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has now been indicted on over 30 charges relating to his part in the Boston Marathon bombing. Of particular note however is a charge of using a 'Weapon of Mass Destruction.' It's a bit out of line with the commonly-held perception of the term, most notably used in justifying the invasion of Iraq. However, U.S. criminal law defines a 'weapon of mass destruction' much more broadly, including virtually any explosive device: bombs, grenades, rockets, missiles, mines, etc. The question arises: is it wise for Tsarnaev to face such a politically-loaded charge? From an outsider perspective, it would seem easy enough to leverage any number of domestic anti-terror laws to achieve anything up to and including the death penalty if required. Why, then, muddy the waters with this new WMD claim, when the price could be giving further ammunition to groups outside of America that already clearly feel the rules are set up to indict them on false pretenses, and explicitly use this sense of outrage to attract new terrorist recruits?"
Absolutely not. Tsarnaev is a terrorist and a murderer. As such, he should be indicted logically, using the law logically, and with all the abundance of evidence arrayed against him.
By trumpeting the charges and re-defining the semantics behind the term WMD, we turn a legitimate case into a political circus. Moreover, when we cheapen a word or term (WMD in this case), when we redefined in an ad hoc manner away from the commonly accepted semantics of it, we setup a terrible precedent, one than can be legitimacy challenged by Tsarnaev's attorney.
There is no sane way in which we can interpret a pipebomb or a pressure cooker bomb as a weapon of mass destruction. No common person exercising common sense and common knowledge can accept such a definition. Any such redefinition is no longer objective. It is biased and subjective, one that can run into trouble with a judge in a court of law (or a jury).
So why risk it? I mean, there are many reasons, political and circus-like reasons, yes, but no valid, legal or ethical reasons.
Tsarnaev is guilty of terrorism. It is guilty of murder. It is guilty of harming other people and property. It is guilty of robbery. It is guilty of kidnapping. It is guilty of manufacturing and deploying destructive devises (of which WMDs are just a very small subset.) One could argue that he is guilty of organized crime (with the objective of committing acts of terrorism.)
There is plenty of objective evidence with which to finding him guilty of all of that in state and federal courts.
He is not guilty of using a WMD. This is a slippery slope for something that is completely unnecessary. If we use that logic, does a mass shooting turns a rifle into a WMD? Does crashing a car to run into a store turns it into a WMD? As horrible as these things might be, there are laws of sufficient strength and logical soundness to prosecute such acts.
This move does not make us safer. In fact, it might have the opposite effect since it trivializes the meaning behind "WMD", which could make it more difficult to prosecute an actual WMD charge.
Authorities, please: Let us not make one more mockery out of legal institutions and charge this criminal appropriately. Do not turn our courts for such an important case into a political circus, please.
The Times Square (attempted) bomb was termed a "weapon of mass destruction" in the charges that were filed. I do think "WMD" is over-kill for those cases.
there is a difference between federal law and state law. Murder is not generally considered a federal offense (in one of the civil rights murders it was federal only because it occurred on federal land http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ex-federal-prosecutor-who-led-historic-case-dies)
That is why people entering the country have to say they will not commit a crime while they are here. Any crime they commit is probably only a state issue, but lying on your federal entry form ...
The use of the term "WMD" simply lays bare government's attitude toward the people under their rule:" they are objects, having some value for the state, which can be damaged or destroyed. They are not people, they are not citizens, they are property. And they don't care that we know that to be the case.
brwski
"Because without beer, things do not seem to go as well''
Does it really matter that this was done with explosives? Would you feel better if he stabbed 237 people to the same effect?
Gloria: "Do you know that sixty percent of all deaths in America are caused by guns?"
Archie: "Would it make you feel any better, little girl, if they was pushed out of windows?"
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It's almost as if words relating to relative magnitudes are context dependent. A weapon that causes mass destruction on the scale of an individual targeting a crowd isn't a weapon of mass destruction when a country targets another. A .50 is a high caliber gun during a drive by in urban LA, but not when a tank fires on another. The Tsar Bomba was a really big bomb, but a tiny nova.
The government has figured out your evil schemes and has their eye on you and your pressure cooking WMDs.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
If he is willing to die as a martyr in defense of Islam, and people will glorify it, let him rot in prison with pictures of western decadence and naked men outside the cell but in plain view. Giving him, in his mind, a vip to heaven and other mental cases a figure to revere is the wrong answer
Because we can.
They do it because they want to force a plea deal.
The only reason they include it is for the so-called trial penalty. It is realistic enough that a judge won't throw it out, but it is so extreme that if the guy chooses to attempt a trial the risk is greater. It will be so extreme that he won't want that risk, so he'll choose the plea bargain instead of rolling the dice at a trial.
This is the biggest current flaw in the US legal system. Prosecutors have no stake in the game, no disincentive from adding trumped-up and unrealistic charges. It is something that other nations managed to get right with prosecutors needing to pay for accusations that don't result in convictions. If prosecutors needed to pay some significant penalty money to compensate the accused for every charge that is dismissed, the problem would quickly dry up.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
If the cost of the damage is in the millions or billions
So a glass of water thrown at a valuable painting is a weapon of mass destruction?
and there is a large number of injured or dead
Cars, skis, swimming pools, common cold, corners of furniture that seem designed for you to stub your toe on, LEGO bricks...
Millions get killed or injured by those EVERY DAY!
And don't get me started on A4 paper and the cuts one can get from THAT.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Any explosive device? Cars & bullets both use explosions to function and are both capable of killing multiple victims.
I think maybe I'll just freeze them.
Less dangerous.
Also, how about the US military? They drop bigger weapons on civilians just for giggles.
I am pretty sure that WMD is supposed to be read literally, as in the bomb literally destroys mass, but in the sense of it destroying the old standard definition of mass being atomic mass rather than mass itself. (so in other words, turning materials in to plasmas)
This is just absurd as fuck.
Seriously, fuck the US Justice system, it is an embarrassment.
Yes, he is a stupid terrorist set out to kill people, but give him the right god damn punishment that fit the god damn crime.
Oh, by the way, best not question your government Americans, you might end up on the PRISM watch list. And I'm only half joking when I say this, you will end up on some watch list somewhere for even questioning this.
Hell, I might even end up on it because my country is buttbuddies with your country these days.
I wish it went back to the good old days where we ejected you from the country and there was still that present-but-calm hatred, the kind of hatred between 2 employees in the same company that compete with each other.
Thanks for saving us some time on this one. Want to cause mass hysteria? Use a gun - you'll kill more people than you would with a bomb, and you'll face lesser charges when you're caught!
+1 Disagree
The simple fact is, and there were people who brought this up during the Bush administration, which is why this is no surprize at all to me now, the law defines just about any explosive intended to harm people as a weapon of mass destruction. This is not new at all. Even while Bush was raving about WMDs in Iraq, the whole time, even a hand grenade was classified as a WMD.
The shocking thing, to my mind is that Bush never used this to his advantage. This dedinition could have easily been used to manufacture some news stories which would lose the details int he shuffle. "We found WMDs!"
What bothers me is that, this happened in MA, and MA specifically doesn't have the death penalty. The AG here should be bending over backwards to make sure he is charged HERE and fight federal attempts on general princible. Banning the death penalty here was done for good reason and he should be working to respect that as an agent of state law not using the federal loophole to allow him to, without any fight, end up in a court that would kill him.
In any case, this is no politically charged charge, its exactly the defined crime under federal law. Its just not clear to me why the federal government should get involved when this seems like one the state can handle.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The rest of the world will find their excuse to hate us anyway.
This makes every explosive the US has ever dropped a "weapon of mass destruction" and means we maintain "weapon of mass destruction fields" between North and South Korea. I say they call it what it is: an explosive device, three murders, several attempted murders, criminal chaos/criminal mischief, assaults with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to murder, etc. There's no reason to go from calling just nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons WMD to making every air force pilot in the world a war criminal just to bust this guy.
The law seems to love sensationalizing terms relating to weapons.
Semiautomatic rifle with a vaguely military appearance? Assault rifle! (which more properly refers to fully-automatic rifles)
Any fully-automatic weapon? Machine gun! (which more properly refers to big belt-fed weapons and the like)
An explosive device? Weapon of mass destruction! (which more properly refers to a nuclear, biological, or chemical weapon)
He should just be charged with what he did:
Killing x people, Wounding y people,
Exploding a bomb with intent to endanger life,
Conspiracy to commit a terrorist act.
Sll the rest is bollocks, MFG, omb
Yea. That's the book written by Bush after the fiasco in Iraq.
Grandstanding and penis waving by prosecutors trying to get as much publicity as possible out of this.
This is not a trial for justice, it's a freaking side show and is already going off the rails.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Killing 3 people and maiming 234 using explosives and shrapnel counts as mass destruction in my book. Thanks for asking, though.
I see your 3 and raise you 66,000; looks like you lose.
In 1946, the Manhattan Engineer District published a study that concluded that 66,000 people were killed at Hiroshima out of a population of 255,000. Of that number, 45,000 died on the first day and 19,000 during the next four months. In addition, "several hundred" survivors were expected to die from radiation-induced cancers and lukemia over the next 30 years. (This report is also known as the Oughterson Commission study.)
And why not pat him on the back and say "good job, you've successfully terrorized us"?
The correct way to deal with this is to charge him with the least impressive-sounding (and hence least rewarding) charges, and take the highest ground possible while still punishing him and sending a strong message to others, rather than suggesting that we're a nation of panicky twits who want to be terrorized so badly we'll terrorize ourselves.
What else?
Why don't they use something similar to the Richter scale for explosives, instead of subjective phrases which can change with the winds of time and fickle emotions.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Plea bargaining nullifies the whole justice system, and I would argue that they are a 6th amendment violation. Coercion of a guilty plea through threatening more serious charges (that may not hold up in court) effectively deprives the accused of a fair trial.
Also plea bargaining requires perjury of both the prosecutor and the accused which further lowers respect for the law.
If someone did something wrong then they should get a fair and public trail and be punished if found guilty. A back room deal to confess to lesser charges after getting intimidated for hours/days by cops and prosecutors is the polar opposite of fair and public.
Judging from the tone of the public response to mass shootings, the weapon chosen absolutely matters a great deal when considering someone's crime.
Why would you ever assume that the weapon *doesn't* matter - you live in and helped create this society... I'm puzzled why you'd be at all surprised that this is the case.
I agree it wasn't a WMD. It was, however, a "destructive device", which I think can actually be possessed legally in some states, IF you get it registered with BATF and pay a tax. There may be other registration requirements, too. I think the whole point of the bomb charge was to make it a federal capital offense, allowing for the use of the death penalty, which the state of MA does not have.
I keep asking myself what the problem is with the U.S. of A., a great country with great people. Why are there more jailed people per capita than in the rest of the world.
Folks like you, that's the problem.
Another loaded term these days is 'felony'. Everything you do these days can some way or another be classified as a 'felony'.
And what's the effective difference between "life imprisonment" for that laundry list of things you just listed, and "life imprisonment" for "using a wmd"?
Seriously. What are we gonna do, resurrect him and sentence him to ANOTHER life term in prison?
And they don't die, that's simply 'dissent'?
Something tells me the US Military is well aware of what they drop on people and what they were accusing Saddam Hussein of possessing. It wasn't merely that he was alleged to have them, but that he was alleged to have them in contravention of some treaty, wasn't it? The issue wasn't about the items, but about the treaty or punishment or whatever not being followed.
I would think one first degree murder would be sufficient, or just all three. These mega-cases otherwise cost tens of millions and take years.
Ditto for the Colorado theater shooter. The judge announced yesterday they will summon a 5000 person jury pool. In that county you have a 2% chance of getting a summons. There are a 150 charges against the guy. Just one first degree conviction would get him Death.
Would you feel better if he stabbed 237 people to the same effect?
Yes, I would. It would be much less likely that someone else could repeat it.
If you do attempt to kill someone, society as a whole is better off if you use a more precise and controllable weapon.
One of the most important, but often overlooked, points of 1984 was how Government uses language as a weapon. If a "Weapon of Mass Destruction" is defined as any bomb, why use the term in some cases but not others? It's emotional manipulation, it's thought policing through language.
In my day we called them "improvised explosive devices" (IED) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_explosive_device
You'd think a lawyer would know the difference.
Now get off my lawn and take your WMD with you.
If you own a pressure cooker and a box of nails, you are obviously in possession of the means for making a weapon of mass destruction.
How come the media never covered this important fact?
Can someone please change the title of this article? He's been accused of being the bomber, but he hasn't been convicted yet. I know that based on the information I have so far I personally think he did it, but the media needs to be particularly diligent about not labeling anyone a criminal before criminal proceedings are complete.
I have to disagree on the 'kill more people' part. If the bomb had been placed slightly differently, say on a table, it would have killed far more people; we got EXTREMELY lucky that it killed as few as it did.
On average, bombings not targeted at a specific individual(IE excluding things like letter bombs) kill more people per incident than shootings do.
Of course, if you're looking to kill the most people, historically arson is your best bet.
I don't read AC A human right
In this thread:
-- Overloading is a surprisingly hard concept for a bunch of IT nerds to grasp. ("MA state law defines the device as a WMD, therefore the US military in Iraq is guilty of using WMDs and ha ha ha ha ha war crimes!")
-- Dimwitted slashdotters parrot anti-american bumper sticker slogans at one another, smugly confident in the assumption that their simplistic world views are totally correct because they heard it on the Daily Show.
-- A bunch of hypocritical slashtards who argue for gun control every time a crazy guy with a gun kills someone argue that "it doesn't matter what weapon was used to commit this crime, he should just be charged with murder. He could have done the same thing with a knife."
-- Slashdot finally stops circling the drain of mediocrity, and embraces its role as echo chamber for the ignorant.
What a joke. We have no idea whether there were actually any real bombs at this 'event'. It's another false flag attack. Try doing some research.
http://enfordummies.com/wordpress/more-proof-evidence-boston-bombing-man-leg-blown-off-fake/
Still, I'm sure you'd rather believe anything the Jew-owned media tells you...
Isn't he up for the death penalty? While I don't object to the prosecution pushing every charge they think they have a chance to make stick in this case, you're typically not allowed to plead guilty to something with the DP.
Unless they're willing to let him plea down to only life in prison w/o parole.
I don't read AC A human right
Are well all such barbaric simpletons that we have forgotten to use the word allegedly until he is fucking proven guilty? If this were anything less outrageous the /. crowd would be beating their chests about making sure innocent until proven guilty is brought up. All I've seen are people who are calling for this guy's head even though the justice system hasn't decided yet.
I'm just waiting for the case where they really do throw the book at someone...the whole library of congress worth. The case might go on for a while though unless the judge dismisses it as a waste of time.
It's like "resisting arrest" - it's the chocolate sprinkles of the legal system. Another bullet in the gun to shoot yourself with.
The issue wasn't about the items, but about the treaty or punishment or whatever not being followed.
My view on the reasons for the 2nd Iraq war.
1. Bush wanting to finish what his father started.
2. Saddam was *constantly* violating the terms of the cease fire. Violating no-fly zones, hiding things, moving troops where he wasn't supposed to, etc... I deployed to Kuwait during that period, we were dropping bombs constantly to enforce the rules.
3. An honest desire to 'clean up' the mess of the past; not create another NK situation. The idea(that didn't pan out nearly as well as hoped) was to lance the problem so we don't need military bases sitting around the area 50 years later.
4. Possible WMDs. And yes, I count WMD as 'Nuclear, biological, Chemical'. Or if you insist on the newer termology: "Chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear". On the world stage, countries don't typically worry about other countries having conventional explosives - have all the 500-2000 pound bombs, mortar and artillery shells, and everything else you want. They worry about WMD. A conventional bomb built into a pressure cooker shouldn't be considered a WMD because it dilutes the term.
I don't read AC A human right
I think they should refer to the bombs used in this case Weapons of Mass Hysteria. They cause more hysteria than actual destruction. McVeigh's fertilizer bomb was a better candidate for destruction.
It definitely doesn't count, in my book. You post-cold-war kids are so cute. Did you know the band Megadeth got their name from something that was believed to be reasonably likely could happen? 237 casualties isn't even a blip on the WMD scale. WMDs are for serious scale murder.
Exaggeration sounds like good idea when you're going after a specific bad guy, but it reminds me of how "registered sex offender" used to mean "rapist" and now, for all you know, it can mean some kid who sext-messaged his girlfriend or maybe even got drunk and peed on a parking meter.
Overbroad terminology abuse will remove stigma. Now the next time someone wants to start a hideously expensive war over alleged WMDs, the public will say "why should I care if Saddam II has a hand grenade?"
Hmm... now that I think of it, this could save us a shitload of money. Ok, you've convinced m-- wait, what if Saddam II actually has (oldschool definition) WMDs? Are we going to need a new term that means the same as WMD used to mean, like "WMDs, no I mean for real, 'Threads' and 'The Day After' style, dude!"?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
...
There may be some validity with what youre saying, but in ANY court system any prosecutor can threaten to charge you with any crime.
The defense you have is that the legal system is designed to figure out which charges apply and you are guilty of. I guess you could make a prosecutor have a stake in the game by going after them if the defendent is ruled innocent, but that seems to create a system where noone wants to be a prosecutor.
Can you imagine a situation where noone wants to charge a mafia boss because theyre not 100% sure that he wont get off on a technicality, and the prosecution becomes liable for significant penalties?
Of course, we were at war, and a war that we didnt even start and took pains to stay out of, so I think there might be some difference there.
Don't use a musket, though. Firearms over .50 qualify as WMDs too.
No, of course it's unwise for him to face any charge. It is, however, wise for the DA to throw the book at him.
Is there any rational point to your comparison of scale? It doesn't seem to me that "he could have killed tens or hundreds of thousands; therefore 3 dead and over 200 injured do not count" is very rational.
As for
> "...and explicitly use this sense of outrage to attract new terrorist recruits?"
People don't become terrorists because they are angry at stupid legal terms used to charge murderers.
If people sympathize with a murderer, it's because they have a deep problem with our culture that can't be solved by "playing nice". So even if WMD is a stupid name for a legal term, it has nothing to do with future terrorism.
BTW, WMD is a lousy name, maybe "of Mass Murder" would be better.
People are such pedantic dumbasses. The international definition of a WMD is _different_ from the domestic criminal code definition. Is that really so whacky and inscrutable?
To the DoD a WMD is a chemical, biological, or nuclear weapon. To the FBI, it's a bomb.
Easy peasy.
By that definition, Iraq did have WMDs when we invaded in '03, and we found them! Mission Accomplished!
Best. New. Political. System. EVAR!!!!!
Seems to be how most companies are run, too.
Why would you want to strike any kind of a deal with this dirtbag!? The guy has done a terrible deed, admitted so to multiple witnesses, wrote a confession note. Plus they have a boatload of forensic evidence.
It's dumb that I have to say this but what happened in Boston is horrible and the people responsible should be punished, but...
This is ridiculous. Why don't they just call it what it actually is instead of sensationalizing it. WMD!? It's like middle school all over again, painting a stripe on it doesn't make it go faster. Charging the case on what it actually would have been a step in the right direction in building some sorely needed credibility. What's next, being charged for terrorism for riding a bicycle to work because it doesn't use gas and that hurts the US economy, and by extension everyone everywhere..?
To paraphrase Chris Rock....
Ladies and Gentlemen, the american white man is afraid. He was afraid of the indians, so he killed them, he was afraid of the black man, so he enslaved him, and now he is afraid of the arab, so he is attacking him.
I'm sure i got that badly wrong, but couldn't find a youtube clip of it, but i agree with Chris Rock on this, the US Leadership (and possibly a substantial part of the population since they don't get up in arms about what their government is doing), is afraid. They are afraid of losing their suburban homes, with their 2 cars and 2 kids with their McDonlands and their comfy lifestyle... strangely enough, it seems like the biggest danger to the US is the US itself, with its economic and foreign policies.
Been saying it for 10 or more years now, the US is the new Rome. Its just a matter of time before the empire eats itself from within and there are Visgoths at the gates.
And over 1/4oz in your 303 rifle, IIRC.
So the NRA members are carrying around or have in their home several WMDs.
If you are deranged or evil enough and you go to a crowded public square, pick a particular moment (particular crowd), and start turning in a circle shooting with your semi automatic rifle with no particular aiming, you are no more or less effectively discriminating who you are killing and maiming than if you went to the same square and placed a small bomb and waited for a particular moment (particular crowd). You don't know the people in either case, and you in either case "discriminated" (picked) the general group that would be targeted, by your timing and observation.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The whole thing is just silly. We've become a bunch of infants.
Charge him with the crimes he committed. Convict him. Put him in jail for the rest of his life. Move on.
Instead......
We will get a media-aided infantilizing freak show. He's a terrorist. He's a muslim. He hates our way of life. He represents the end of civilization as we know it.
Well I guess the MythBusters have been using WMD's all along.
I guess they are in big trouble now.
The term "WMD" was intended to distinguish certain weapons of "mass destruction" from other conventional weapons, for instance conventional bunker-busting bombs. With respect to military weapons, a convention explosive bomb capable of leveling a three story building is not considered a WMD. WMD was meant to describe weapons such as thermonuclear bombs, mass chemical and biological agents, etc.
It appears we no longer have a useful term to refer to weapons which cause "mass destruction." Apparently, a couple of ounces of low-velocity explosive packed inside a metal container one can acquire at Walmart now meet the qualification. This is ludicrous.
So you become automatically bullet proof if you're holding a gun now?
And I guess the cop deaths where they go armed against other armed criminals don't prove you wrong, because, huh?
What about a "firebomb"? Because of the offices of the woman who recently filibustered the Texas Senate over an abortion bill were firebombed. I don't see Texas in lockdown and performing a house to house search for THAT terrorist!
"Any explosive device" could include the gasoline tank in your car. So therefore, EVERYONE IN 'MURICA has a weapon of mass destruction in their driveway or parked on the street, right?
Got a propane BBQ grill? WMD. Got a can of starting fluid? WMD. How about hairspray? Powdered non-dairy creamer? Under this definition, I probably have a dozen, maybe two dozen WMDs in my home, and so do the rest of you. Everyone is a perp, a potential terrorist and a criminal.
No wonder the NSA is spying on everyone; because according to the government, you're all guilty of high crimes against the people of the United States, and you should all be incarcerated. Notice how you're the victim and the perp at the same time. Makes things nice and convenient.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
They do it because they want to force a plea deal.
The only reason they include it is for the so-called trial penalty. It is realistic enough that a judge won't throw it out, but it is so extreme that if the guy chooses to attempt a trial the risk is greater. It will be so extreme that he won't want that risk, so he'll choose the plea bargain instead of rolling the dice at a trial..
Do you really think that the government will offer this guy a plea bargain? What would it be? "Take life in prison and we'll drop all the charges but murder."
I've read a lot of comments now saying or implying that this man is murderer. It really bothers me. What about "innocent until proven guilty" and the right to a fair trial? It seems like the vast majority of people here just assume he'll be convicted and call him a murderer, while this is blatantly untrue, at this point he is only *accused* of murder.
This ideology (that we can assume a conviction, if we think it should happen) is one of the big issue with our (the USA) society and judicial system. Now that everyone seems to think this man is a murderer, there will be extreme pressure on the judge (or jury) to convict him, regardless of the facts of the case. In this case it seems pretty clear, but not for every case where this type public of expression is seen.
Uhhh, maybe you've forgotten this bit of American History, where we killed 1.4 Million civillians.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Didn't they have pressure cookers in Iraq? That would have avoided Bush's great fiasco.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Destruction is a pretty heavy term. Mass destruction should be set aside for around the tens of thousands dead / hundreds of thousands injured level, or hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in damage level.
This is what I would call moderate destruction, if only to account for injuries. The monetary damages do not warrant even a moderate rating. (Ignoring the insane medical bills due to our shitty healthcare system[Getting one leg amputated probably costs you the other one.])
but I guess we call it mass murder at the 4 person mark in the US... so whatever. I guess by that standard it did cause destruction en masse.
That still seems too convoluted to me. I'd just go with:
Killing X people, Wounding Y people, Attepting to kill Z people.
Anything else is just going after him for his motivation and/or his choice of tools.
With an X of even 1 that SHOULD be enough for the maximum punishments possible so even analyze it beyond that?
This statement has me confused: "anything up to and including the death penalty if required"
The confusion is because I've been seeing the Aaron Hernandez case a lot in the news recently and they keep mentioning that the max pentalty he can receive is life in prison as Massachussetts does not have a death penalty. I don't have a problem with the death penalty in the Boston marathon case, but as a computer scientist this logic problem is bugging me. If they say Aaron Hernandez cannot get the death penalty how can they then say the max penalty in the Boston bombing case is the death penalty?
I hope they don't kill him although I'm sure that will be the outcome. Please, don't mistake this for any sort of sympathy. With a death penalty he gets to stay in isolation until he runs out of appeals and then they have to get rid of him humanely.
I would rather see someone who comits an act like this get to go hang out with the general population of a very hard prison for as long as he can last. Everyone will know exactly who he is and why he is there. If I were the warden I might even be sure to let the other prisoners know that anyone who kills him is going to have a very hard time afterward. I wouldn't say a damn thing about what happens to someone who does anything less than kill him though.
I guess my wife's meat loaf would fall into that category as well.
Have gnu, will travel.
They could at least have charged him for APT.
WMDs are so overrated now.
I'm sure there's lots of explosives of all kind in Iran's military depot. Therefore they own untold millions of weapons of mass destruction, therefore the USA are morally obligated to liberate their country really soon! QED.
Because to the prosecution, it's a game they play for political advantage. It's not about justice, or even about what the guy did. It's lawyers fighting lawyers for lawyer-prestige points. The victims, the perpetrator, the witnesses, even the police, are just the setup for the game.
While I agree with most of what you say, calling him "it" doesn't seem helpful. He's still human and I'm not sure what you hope to achieve by excluding him from the species. Sounds like the kind of language that would get a prosecutor a reproach for turning the court into the kind of circus you've advocated avoiding.
Chalk it up to a language problem (English is not my mother tongue) and/or a repeated typo due to posting in haste. I did not do it intentionally.
With that said, I wouldn't really care much about the way this person is being described in the media or in a blog post. I would care about his treatment in the legal system, and for that I would hope our legal institutions do their jobs (but trumpeting the charges suggest me they might not.) If we are to split hairs on the rhetorical artifacts at hand, would it really had matter if I would use "he" but consistently called him a fucking asshole? The description would have retained his status as a human in the nominal sense, but it is certainly questionable from the point of being civil.
He's also not guilty of anything yet.
I know that, and I wrote what I wrote on purpose. De jure, legally and technically he is not guilty of anything until the jury provides a verdict.
De facto, however, that does not change his condition of being guilty of the crimes committed of which irrefutable evidence abounds. If I pull the trigger on someone on live TV and watched by millions, I'm guilty, regardless of whether a jury gives a verdict in a court of law. By your logic, I would not be guilty.
Obviously we have an ethical obligation in the general case to prefer de jure over de facto, but that in no way prevents the rational and logical discussion of a de facto condition of guilt when the evidence is overwhelming, powerful and pretty much irrefutable.
At this point what we need is to follow the rules of law, without trumpeting charges to stupid levels, so that we formalize a de jure verdict of guilt properly fitting to the de facto guilt and criminal responsibility of this person as testified by the abundance of evidence.
It is that formalization that becomes at risk by exaggerating the charges against Tsarnaev. If Tsarnaev is found not guilty, it will be due to a technicality or an error by the prosecution, not because he is in fact not guilty (not material and morally responsible) for the crimes, the real acts of murder that he was committed or complicit. A technical verdict of not guilty is a real possibility th e
Authorities, please: Let us not make one more mockery out of legal institutions and charge this criminal appropriately.
Don't make a mockery of legal institutions by assuming a suspect's guilt before his trial.
Ok, you win. He didn't do it. He is not a criminal. He didn't shoot anybody. He didn't shoot the cops that were trying to apprehend him. He didn't kidnap anybody. Etc, etc. All is a figment of the imagination, and the moral responsibility of a crime committed with ample witnesses do not materialize until a formality (now being jeopardized by a trumpeted WMD charge) is being completed.
I'm not free to assume his guilt despite the preponderance of evidence. I'm not free to reason on that assumption (and if I'm not neither is the prosecution, a chicken-n-egg kind of thing.)
I'm not free to call up the authorities to stop trumpeting the charges. I'm not free to ask them to please use sensible interpretations of charges. Let us invalidate all this line of reasoning because I dared state my belief that Tsarnaev is a criminal based on the preponderance of evidence instead of amorally waiting on the final verdict (which is in real jeopardy due to the trumpeted WMD charges.)
You sir, are awesome.
When I was in high school over a decade ago, I was arrested with several friends for blowing up a porta-potty with a pipe bomb. One of the charges against us was 'Possession of a weapon of mass destruction'.
When someone kills people, murder is a charge which is quite sufficient.
All the rest of the posing on the part of the government is just
prancing around for publicity.
It is similar to the bullshit about "hate crimes". There was never a need to
create a label or law such as "hate crime". A crime is a crime.
There are only a handful of things that will get you sentenced to death under federal law. Yes, he could be charged with first degree murder, but that wasn't done on the federal level, so the jurisdiction of the commonwealth of Massachusetts would take precedence over federal law there (and there is no death penalty in MA). He can be charged FEDERALLY with nothing else that would be able to get him the death penalty. He wasn't smuggling aliens, did not destroy aircraft, did not perpetrate a drug-related drive-by shooting, didn't kill law enforcement officials, etc. Thus this is the only charge that the federal government can bring against him that could result in the death penalty. It's not about being politically charged - it's about them desiring to be able to kill him, and not having another way to go about it.
Daddy got the family oil-wells back. What exactly needed to be finished?
The no-fly zone wasn't part of the cease-fire. I remember an episode of 'Jag' glorifying this attack on Iraqi sovereignty.
The USA supported the rise of Saddam so multi-nationals could continue plundering Iraqi oil. Like many dictators he nationalized the natural resources, but the USA kept him as an ally. The USA militarized Iraq by encouraging and prolonging the Iranian border war. Saddam admitted his plans to the USA who objected to the Kuwaiti invasion only after it happened. Iraq has been a mess of territorial/political/religious division for 100 years. What mess do bombs and bullets fix?
Occupation and economic imperialism requires fewer military bases? I think the billions of dollars invested in Iraq will have more effect than all those bombs the USA tired of dropping.
1,000 kilos of chlorine is easier to get than a 10 kilos of refined uranium. And it will do more damage in a city. This dirty bomb concept is a load of bullshit.
People are dying in droves in Chicago, but I guess that's ok because they don't use bombs and aren't "terrorists" just "criminals."
The WMD charge is supposed to make this look like something other than just a criminal trial.
is any device more effective at challenging the [lawful] monopoly on violence than civilian issue firearms and perhaps motor vehicles not requiring a CDL.
The right of revolution is secured only by success.
--
Common Sense 101
Prosecutors always overcharge the accused because 1) they can do it, and 2) it gives them leverage to get a plea bargain approved and avoid going to court and having to pay for an expensive trial. Because of the federal budget woes right now which has caused courts, the U.S. attorneys' offices (the prosecutors), and the federal public defenders' offices to lay off clerks and lawyers (but not judges) they undoubtedly would not want to go to trial given how hugely expensive it would be. But regardless of whether this guy is charged by the feds or the commonwealth of Massachusetts he at a minimum is going to spend his life in prison, probably a supermax. He could be the Unibomber's cellmate whenever the Supreme Court finally abolishes solitary confinement. Perhaps they could compare notes.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
woot! finally, the WMD that caused us to invade Iraq was found, oddly enough, in America, where it was used, under the noses of the NSA who has been spying on us for the last decade.
That is a fail on many fronts by our Government.
Be seeing you...
So is the St. Patrick's Day corned beef and cabbage I cook in my pressure cooker now a WMD? Or is that WMDP or PWMD? Can I carry an unloaded pressure cooker on a plane? Will DOD, CIA, NPR and CBS drop IED for WMD? Inquiring acronym hunters want to know. He may be guilty as sin but this makes it all sound like the 1938 Moscow show trials meet the Marx brothers doing "who's on first".
Just like the RICO laws resulted in an ever-widening definition of "conspiracy", or corporations becoming more and more "people" over time.
Table-ized A.I.
Have "Congress make a law" merely to compel the SCOTUS to rule that the "Constitution a suicide pact".
You just couldn't resist getting a dig in at Bush.
Don't forget using a gun in the commission of a crime.
And probably several interstate commerce violations.
It is something that other nations managed to get right with prosecutors needing to pay for accusations that don't result in convictions.
What mechanisms do other nations have to make prosecutors pay for over-charging? I presume it's not a monetary fine because that would bring a whole host of issues, but I'd be interested to hear what mechanisms have been instituted.
Then charge him with three counts of murder and 234 counts of attempted murder. Does it really matter that this was done with explosives? Would you feel better if he stabbed 237 people to the same effect?
Yes, it does matter. Bombs are inherently more dangerous. You want to persuade people not to use them. Legal penalties tend to scale with the seriousness of the offense. Possessing some minor illegal fireworks might get you a modest fine and maybe 30 days in jail. Possessing a bomb is going to result in a much harsher penalty.
If he had set off his bomb, but through some miracle it neither killed nor wounded anybody, he could still be charged with the use of the bomb - a criminal law weapon of mass destruction. That could still result in significant jail time. In this scenario, in which he didn't manage to kill or wound anybody, that would be useful since there would be no murder or maiming to charge him with, although you could still try for attempted murder. But the thing is, juries can do funny things. They might question if he really meant to kill anybody, that can't really question that he set off a bomb.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I'd like to point out that Whitey Bulger is known to have killed 19 people(among many, many other crimes) and is NOT facing the death penalty.
I'd be interested in your take: I'm under the impression that Saddam wanted to portray the illusion of having WMDs (beyond his chemical arsenal) for the purpose of elevating his standing among neighboring countries. He gambled that the US wouldn't act, and misjudged. Badly.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Of course, we were at war, and a war that we didnt even start and took pains to stay out of, so I think there might be some difference there.
This is a discussion over the classification of the Boston Bombers bomb as a "Weapon of Mass Destruction".
I gave you a concrete example of the number of deaths caused by a Weapon of Mass Destruction; which was 2,200,000% FUCKING GREATER.
Of what consequence does "being at war" have with the destructive power of an atomic bomb vs. the destructive power of a pressure cooker. Unless you think 2 million is a statistical anomaly?
Ohhh... I see what happened you got confused about what the debate was, and started rationalizing that 3 American lives were still greater than 66,000 nips. Please, continue on then, I'd like to see you defend that position. I'll go make some popcorn.
Is there any rational point to your comparison of scale? It doesn't seem to me that "he could have killed tens or hundreds of thousands; therefore 3 dead and over 200 injured do not count" is very rational.
Uhh.. yes, he could have killed tens or hundreds of thousands... if he had a fucking weapon of mass destruction... but since he did not, he only killed 3 people.
See, WMD = lots of deaths hence the word "MASS", non-WMD = few deaths.
Now if you set off an atomic bomb in in a crowded city and ONLY kill 3 people, then we can come back and re-visit the issue; but that won't happen because an atomic bomb causes... MASS DESTRUCTION. Now do you see the fucking difference!?
... Conspiracy to commit a terrorist act ...
What is terrorism exactly? There is no agreed definition.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
I was mostly concentrating on Bush's reasons to go to war. It does seem that Saddam was playing a coy game about possibly still having/working on them, they did have a rather nasty shooting war with Iran, and having the weapons was supposed to be a way to defend against their rapidly improving military.
Roughly speaking, I hate it when people post things like 'it's all about the oil!!!!'. Let's face it: A government isn't a person. It doesn't have views, much less feelings. The best you can do is look at a general trend of the individuals within the government. Everything else is complicated interactions.
For example - Oil might explain the first gulf war, but Iraq doesn't have the oil reserves Kuwait did. Even if it did, you'd logically get a Saudi Arabia situation - hate their guts all you like, but the black gold will flow. If it was truly about the oil, it would have been far cheaper to ignore Saddam's abuses and simply paid his price. Even if he refused to sell to the USA, he probably would have sold to Europe & China, and those areas would simply have bought less US, Canada, Mexico, Central and South American oil, leaving it equally cheaper on the international market.
In reality, I figure 'possible WMDs' was actually pretty far down Bush's list of reasons for invading Iraq. But it was the one that sold for getting what international cooperation he was able to get, thus is the one he ended up pushing everywhere. I mean, we talk about politicians being dishonest left and right but believe Bush when he says it was about the WMD? Or attribute it to 'Oil!' when we went about it in a way that that would be so inefficient about it? One wants to get into nitpick theories, it was also a 'safe' way to validate US military combat theories. We paid a heavy price to gain our current skills in the area; and they're subject to degradation if you don't have combat to keep them up.
I don't read AC A human right
They want precedent. As much flexibility as possible to tack on more charges whenever they feel like it. If they could call a backpack a WMD in this case, they would, just so the next time some league of legends of player makes a joke-threat while wearing a backpack they can hit him with WMD charges.
Over 200 injuries is mass destruction in any sane man's book. End of story.
Therefore the criminal charge is invalid since a weapon of mass destruction can not exist.
The charge should really be called something like "using a weapon capable of destruction of personnel and materiel en-masse to convert the mass of said personnel and/or materiel into smaller bits of personnel and/or materiel".
If the definition doesn't fit you must acquit!
Seriously though I hope they roast this guy.
Mod me down with all of your hatred, and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
No, it was a stupid point. Apparently (according to the summary and the linked US law), that is a legal term which includes explosives. I would note that the term "explosives" can refer both to a common backyard bottle rocket, and to the Tsar Bomba, a 100MT warhead, which is several trillion times more powerful than said bottlerocket. Clearly there is a problem with the classification "explosive", right?
I was confused because I didnt think anyone would honestly be arguing the point. Just because you misunderstand the term, doesnt mean its a bad term.
This story was in the Washington Post back in April.
The term "weapon of mass destruction" has a legal definition, which you can find here. The definition of a "destructive device" is here, which I'll quote parts of.
Relevant part of 18 USC 2332a:
(2) the term “weapon of mass destruction” means—
(A) any destructive device as defined in section 921 of this title;
(B) any weapon that is designed or intended to cause death or serious bodily injury through the release, dissemination, or impact of toxic or poisonous chemicals, or their precursors;
(C) any weapon involving a biological agent, toxin, or vector (as those terms are defined in section 178 of this title); or
(D) any weapon that is designed to release radiation or radioactivity at a level dangerous to human life; and
(3) the term “property” includes all real and personal property.
Relevant part of 18 USC 921
(4) The term “destructive device” means—
(A) any explosive, incendiary, or poison gas—
(i) bomb,
(ii) grenade,
(iii) rocket having a propellant charge of more than four ounces,
(iv) missile having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than one-quarter ounce,
(v) mine, or
(vi) device similar to any of the devices described in the preceding clauses;
(B) any type of weapon (other than a shotgun or a shotgun shell which the Attorney General finds is generally recognized as particularly suitable for sporting purposes) by whatever name known which will, or which may be readily converted to, expel a projectile by the action of an explosive or other propellant, and which has any barrel with a bore of more than one-half inch in diameter; and
(C) any combination of parts either designed or intended for use in converting any device into any destructive device described in subparagraph (A) or (B) and from which a destructive device may be readily assembled.
The term “destructive device” shall not include any device which is neither designed nor redesigned for use as a weapon; any device, although originally designed for use as a weapon, which is redesigned for use as a signaling, pyrotechnic, line throwing, safety, or similar device; surplus ordnance sold, loaned, or given by the Secretary of the Army pursuant to the provisions of section 4684 (2), 4685, or 4686 of title 10; or any other device which the Attorney General finds is not likely to be used as a weapon, is an antique, or is a rifle which the owner intends to use solely for sporting, recreational or cultural purposes.
was theoretically justified? They had to have found SOME explosives in Iraq!
As opposed to Weapons of Caring and Kindness?
And you Americans really wonder why we Europeans just can't take you seriously anymore?!
He's a terrorist and deserves to be punished accordingly. But WMD?! Please come on!
Isn't then the knife a weapon of mass destruction too?
That guy who tried to explode a car bomb in NYC in 2010 was also charged with WMDs. Unlike some terrorist attacks in the US, that one didn't even have FBI informants "helping" him and providing fake explosives, or helping mix real explosives like the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Bullets don't count as WMDs, because they're usually only hitting at most one victim per shit (usually.) Doesn't matter that a machine gun can shoot a lot of people in a short time.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I agree that it's a dangerous law. Also, it's a way to make the crime Federal, instead of being a typical state-level crime like murder.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I mean seriously, how far does this go?
I live in Pakistan, and I have a pressure cooker.
If I happen to be walking outside with my cooker, will I be carrying a WMD?
If a drone kills me, will I be counted as a terrorist?
-----
But screw me, *you* are the guys who are really fucked.
I never had rights in the first place, but you...
Good luck carrying a utensil around. Frankly it's hilarious.
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
Wow! does that mean the time that I was burning some stuff in a barrel at the back of my property and tossed in some aerosol cans for effect I could have been charged for using a WMD? This is real scary stuff.