The guns of Boston

[funkychinaman]

As for the charges, "one count of using and conspiring to use an improvised explosive device against persons and property within the United States resulting in death and one count of malicious destruction of property by means of an explosive device resulting in death." These are federal charges, so he could be facing the needle.

If I were his lawyer, I'd try to pin most of the blame on the older brother, saying that he was just an accomplice, and try to get the death penalty off the table.

I was really surprised when I heard that the older brother had a wife and kid. Who does this sort of thing with a family to support? That poor kid will have to live with the fact that her father was a terrorist.

[Excalibur]

Originally Posted by funkychinaman

I was really surprised when I heard that the older brother had a wife and kid. Who does this sort of thing with a family to support? That poor kid will have to live with the fact that her father was a terrorist.

Ask the suicide bombers. A lot of them most likely had wives and kids as well.

Just because a criminal had raised a family doesn't excuse or change the effect of what was done, a crime. You know who else had family? The people that died in the explosion, the people who were maimed by the bomb.

[MT2008]

Originally Posted by Excalibur

Ask the suicide bombers. A lot of them most likely had wives and kids as well.

Just because a criminal had raised a family doesn't excuse or change the effect of what was done, a crime. You know who else had family? The people that died in the explosion, the people who were maimed by the bomb.

I don't think he's saying it excuses what was done; only that it makes the guy's motives more esoteric. Seriously, why would you ever think Funkychinaman wanted to excuse these guys?

Originally Posted by commando552

I see no problem with police wearing camouflage, as there are instances where they will be operating in wide open rural areas (in the case of non metro police departments anyway) where it is beneficial not to be seen by the bad guys. A couple of years ago in England there was a big man hunt for a guy who had shot three people including a police officer, and armed officers were called in from a load of different police forces to help with the search, including me. I didn't feel particularly stealthy creeping along in green woodland wearing all black with a black/white chequered band around my baseball cap. I would have given anything to be allowed to wear my old DPMs that day.

To be fair though, I don't know what advantage anyone is getting out of wearing UCP, that seems a bit show-off-ish. Part of it might be the fact that by and large tactical equipment is more readily available in military patterns though. Also about the UMPs, it's not like they carry those around every day is it? This was an exceptional situation that led to them being more heavily armed than they would normally be, which is fair enough.

I dunno, the assortment of camo patterns I am seeing don't really seem appropriate for the terrain. When I lived in NC, our local SERT tactical team wore woodland camo BDUs, but only while serving warrants outside of town (i.e. when busting weed and meth dealers operating in houses deep within the woods). What we have in the case of Boston are guys wearing camo patterns appropriate for woodland terrain even though they are chasing suspects in an urban area. It seems unnecessary, and comes across as an attempt to look more badass than they are.

Not sure it demonstrates that our police forces are becoming "militarized", though. SWAT teams have always shared equipment and weapons with SOF (since that's what most of them were before they re-joined the civilian world). Until SWAT teams start using integrated network ops to gather intel on suspects (infringing on electronic privacy), and then start raiding said suspects' homes with shoot-to-kill orders, I don't see any reason to be concerned about their (slightly gratuitous) use of military camouflage uniforms. "Militarization" is just not a word I use so lightly.

[funkychinaman]

Originally Posted by Excalibur

Ask the suicide bombers. A lot of them most likely had wives and kids as well.

Just because a criminal had raised a family doesn't excuse or change the effect of what was done, a crime. You know who else had family? The people that died in the explosion, the people who were maimed by the bomb.

I'm certainly not making excuses for these guys, but neither of them really fit the profile, especially the younger one. You want to go do something that may ruin or end your own life, that's fine, but when you get married and/or have kids, your life is no longer truly your own. And the fact that your offspring will have to carry on the shame something you've done should be a deterrent.

[Excalibur]

I prefer to focus on the crimes they committed and not the people they left behind because a lot of people who died left a lot of people behind without a choice. Someone talked to me about his girlfriend's uncle who was this big shot business tycoon, made lots of money but was incredibly stressed and with some problems with his mental health. He was one day from being committed when he committed suicide via hanging. He left a family of 5 kids behind. My buddy kept on talking about not the act of suicide but the consequences of leaving behind a whole family, scarring his kids. But that's a whole other conversation.

For me, people who commit crimes like this and get killed in the process. They knew the consequences, the death, violence, chaos, etc. The people they leave behind, they either didn't think about it or knew it and didn't care enough. Some people for them, their families alone is not enough of a reason to keep on living anymore.

Ok, maybe these bombers weren't planning on dying but when you plant bombs, you knew the risks and what happens. These guys killed innocent people with families, killed a cop who had a family that's going to miss him.

[Chitoryu12]

Originally Posted by funkychinaman

I'm certainly not making excuses for these guys, but neither of them really fit the profile, especially the younger one. You want to go do something that may ruin or end your own life, that's fine, but when you get married and/or have kids, your life is no longer truly your own. And the fact that your offspring will have to carry on the shame something you've done should be a deterrent.

I looked at the older brother's history a bit more. His family pushed him into kickboxing and more religion to try and better channel his aggressive behavior (which wouldn't be made any better by growing up in Chechnya). Instead, he started to go for the darker side of radical Islam and became more fundamentalist. His coach and someone who sparred with him described him as arrogant despite his talent, while the sparring partner said that he was a "coward" and lacked competitiveness. He beat his wife, calling her a prostitute and slut and demanding that she convert to Islam and cover herself.

What it all looks like is that Tamerlan was already a violent person, and the efforts to get him on the straight and narrow didn't help. Fundamentalist religious beliefs gave him an excuse to resort to violence against people he didn't like, and he probably bullied his younger brother from an early age and essentially dragged him into it. He was a douchebag using his radical beliefs as an excuse for hurting people. It's a selfishness that makes you wonder how much he truly cared for his wife and child.

[Excalibur]

http://www.infowars.com/shocking-foo...by-swat-teams/

[MT2008]

So it turns out that the brothers actually had only one gun - a Ruger SR9 that was fired by Tamerlan.

Originally Posted by Excalibur

http://www.infowars.com/shocking-foo...by-swat-teams/

Why on Earth would you link to something by Alex Jones? That dude is a fucking moron.

[Excalibur]

Actually it wasn't the article of Alex Jones I was looking at. It was just the video. I didn't even read the article. I just forgot that the vid is youtube and I could have just linked the youtube vid directly. I also didn't want to repost even single photo of guns LEOs and their guns on this thread.

Originally Posted by MT2008

So it turns out that the brothers actually had only one gun - a Ruger SR9 that was fired by Tamerlan.

Apparently they couldn't get the gun from the cop they killed because his holster prevented them from taking it.

[MT2008]

So a bunch of sources are now reporting that one of the weapons used was an "M4 carbine", and that the police recovered it from the boat where Dhozkar was holed up. I can almost guarantee that this is a mistake and that he wasn't using a mil-spec weapon, but it is starting to sound as though they had an AR-15 of some type.

It's also been reported that they had a "BB gun" of some kind. I'm guessing that it was probably an airsoft version of some tacticool weapon (like an FN SCAR) that would have been too expensive for them to afford. They probably carried it to give the impression that they were better-armed than they actually were.

But, again, we will have to wait and see.