Why are bombs not used more by mass murderers?

I mean the lone wolf type, not the terrorist type. A bomb can do a lot more damage and you can place them in multiple places, not to mention the police take longer to collect evidence leading to the culprit, do you would be able to attack more.

I imagine that it's due to the difficulty in constructing them; an effective bomb would require a large amount of supplies and information on how to properly and safely construct them. Also bombs don't cause as many deaths as simply shooting people; Behring's bomb only killed 8 people. Guns are way easier, basically.

Timothy Mcveigh

They are hard to make, that's it.

They are effective (if done right) and the bomber doesn't get his widdle hands dirty. Timothy McVeigh, for the horror and chaos he created, walked away and didn't care to the end. I admire him in that he haltled all appeals, went to the death chamber and took his punishment. Imagine! Holding yourself accountable, not only to you, but to the world who abhors you. Halted his appeals and said, kill me.

Having studied his case extensively, he absolutely had more help than Nichols and Fortier. And the hell of it is, he never mentioned a soul.

For all his bravado, I find it hard he didn't have regrets, particularly the childrens' death.

That's the extent of why I admire (not the right word, because his motive and opinions are against mine) McVeigh. He didn't appeal after appeal after appeal. He said, meh, I'm done. A federal death penalty executed in the 4 years from conviction to death. And, yes, he died peacefully with a Fuck-You-I'd-do-it again look.

Combine McVeigh and Breivik? That's the stuff of nightmares. Although I have little respect for Breivik, listening to how his tiny hands were BURNED and SORE after making his bomb has never failed to make me giggle.

McVeigh scares me. Breivik, in his goddam diary with stickers of Justin Bieber adorning it and whining about everything are amusing to me. But when you combine his actions, they are the combination of McVeigh and Cho.

And I just hate how "AWFUL" Breivik's prison conditions are. Research it, you will laugh.

STK wrote:

I imagine that it's due to the difficulty in constructing them; an effective bomb would require a large amount of supplies and information on how to properly and safely construct them. Also bombs don't cause as many deaths as simply shooting people; Behring's bomb only killed 8 people. Guns are way easier, basically.  

From what I remember reading about Breivik, in addition to killing people with the blast, he intended to knock out the columns on the first floor and collapse the entire building. This didn't happen because he weighted the explosives unevenly on one side of his truck so that the force would be stronger in one direction but on the day of the attack he was forced to park somewhere else, further away and facing the opposite direction. Due to this complication, the majority of the blast was facing away from the building he targeted.

If someone constructs their bomb properly and everything goes according to plan, the death toll can be much higher than just shooting people. McVeigh killed 168 people with his bomb and that's why Eric Harris aspired to outdo him and planned to accomplish this with his own bombing. I just learned that McVeigh's lawyers requested a change of venue and his trial took place in Denver instead of Oklahoma. I wonder if Eric paid any attention to the case.

Tomb wrote:

They are effective (if done right) and the bomber doesn't get his widdle hands dirty. Timothy McVeigh, for the horror and chaos he created, walked away and didn't care to the end. I admire him in that he haltled all appeals, went to the death chamber and took his punishment. Imagine! Holding yourself accountable, not only to you, but to the world who abhors you. Halted his appeals and said, kill me.

Having studied his case extensively, he absolutely had more help than Nichols and Fortier. And the hell of it is, he never mentioned a soul.

I never knew much about this but I recently watched a program about the Oklahoma City bombing and it caught my interest. Do you have any recommendations for material about this case (other than the McVeigh biography)? Why do you believe that there were other people involved?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] I started with American Terrorist and went from there. His trial lawyer, Stephen Jones, wrote a book and I read that as well. I'll look through my books to see what I have. A lot of transcripts are online and I've read some of those, plus his statements while in jail. Which, admittedly, revealed little. My personal favorite is the Unabomber in his 11-page handwritten account debating the pros and cons of his former neighbor.

The reason I believe he had help is the sheer cost of the operation (he surely wasn't working on Wall Street, he wasn't working at all), he traveled all over the US for gun shows and eventually met up with The grandson of an original founder of the Nazis. His name is Andreas Strassmeier. I imagine he had great resources and power in that particular movement.

McVeigh also had ties to, and visited, a place called Elohim City which housed that antigovernment group. Fun fact, McVeigh bombed the Murrah building on the day one of the leaders of Elohim City was executed by Arkansas for murder.

Tomb wrote:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] I started with American Terrorist and went from there. His trial lawyer, Stephen Jones, wrote a book and I read that as well. I'll look through my books to see what I have. A lot of transcripts are online and I've read some of those, plus his statements while in jail. Which, admittedly, revealed little. My personal favorite is the Unabomber in his 11-page handwritten account debating the pros and cons of his former neighbor.

The reason I believe he had help is the sheer cost of the operation (he surely wasn't working on Wall Street, he wasn't working at all), he traveled all over the US for gun shows and eventually met up with The grandson of an original founder of the Nazis. His name is Andreas Strassmeier. I imagine he had great resources and power in that particular movement.

McVeigh also had ties to, and visited, a place called Elohim City which housed that antigovernment group. Fun fact, McVeigh bombed the Murrah building on the day one of the leaders of Elohim City was executed by Arkansas for murder.

I came across that Kaczynski letter last night and I thought it was amazing. One domestic terrorist critiquing and expressing solidarity with another.
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The conspiracy theories I have seen so far seem to focus on the prospect that the US government either aided McVeigh or knew about his plans in advance. You're saying that you believe it was people in the right-wing, anti-government movement that supported him instead (or do you believe the government was involved in the activities of these groups)? I have only read vague mentions of these theories so far but the cost is an interesting point. I just saw a reference to the fact that McVeigh's sister claimed he participated in the robberies committed by the Aryan Republican Army. If it's true, that would explain where he got the money to proceed with his plan. Do you think McVeigh's beliefs actually aligned with white supremacists or that it was only his anti-government and pro-gun rights beliefs that converged with theirs?

I'm reading about this now and it looks like it's going to take me a while. I was just interested in McVeigh to begin with but there are a lot of suspicious associations here! Thanks for the response.

sscc wrote:

Tomb wrote:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] I started with American Terrorist and went from there. His trial lawyer, Stephen Jones, wrote a book and I read that as well. I'll look through my books to see what I have. A lot of transcripts are online and I've read some of those, plus his statements while in jail. Which, admittedly, revealed little. My personal favorite is the Unabomber in his 11-page handwritten account debating the pros and cons of his former neighbor.

The reason I believe he had help is the sheer cost of the operation (he surely wasn't working on Wall Street, he wasn't working at all), he traveled all over the US for gun shows and eventually met up with The grandson of an original founder of the Nazis. His name is Andreas Strassmeier. I imagine he had great resources and power in that particular movement.

McVeigh also had ties to, and visited, a place called Elohim City which housed that antigovernment group. Fun fact, McVeigh bombed the Murrah building on the day one of the leaders of Elohim City was executed by Arkansas for murder.

I came across that Kaczynski letter last night and I thought it was amazing. One domestic terrorist critiquing and expressing solidarity with another.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The conspiracy theories I have seen so far seem to focus on the prospect that the US government either aided McVeigh or knew about his plans in advance. You're saying that you believe it was people in the right-wing, anti-government movement that supported him instead (or do you believe the government was involved in the activities of these groups)? I have only read vague mentions of these theories so far but the cost is an interesting point. I just saw a reference to the fact that McVeigh's sister claimed he participated in the robberies committed by the Aryan Republican Army. If it's true, that would explain where he got the money to proceed with his plan. Do you think McVeigh's beliefs actually aligned with white supremacists or that it was only his anti-government and pro-gun rights beliefs that converged with theirs?

I'm reading about this now and it looks like it's going to take me a while. I was just interested in McVeigh to begin with but there are a lot of suspicious associations here! Thanks for the response.

I do not believe there was any government involvement whatsoever. Some people do, but that's too far out there for me to even consider. I don't believe he was racist. I think he was heavily involved in the right wing, antigovernment militia movement. His involvement probably stemmed from his active participation in gun shows, with which he traveled the country. You can make contact with those types fairly easily, especially back then.

The robbery aspect has never been proven, at least not one in which he participated, but it's a widely held belief. Even if he wasn't involved in those robberies, the stolen money would probably have been given to him for his plan. He did, however, commit armed robbery against a wealthy gun seller he'd met on the gun show circuit. I believe Nichols or Fortier was his accomplice. He made off with a decent amount from that.

This was a guy, after all, who really didn't work after leaving the military. He was basically a transient, traveling the country and crashing with his like-minded army pals. He and Nichols broke into a facility in Michigan (maybe a quarry?) and stole dynamite, blasting caps and fuses. They purchased all that fertilizer in Michigan as well. The nitromethane fuel he purchased from a race track in Texas. All the supplies were stored in storage lockers. Witnesses at the lake where they constructed the bomb reported at least 3 men on the day they built it. Someone unknown was with McVeigh when he rented the truck.

He always cited Waco and Ruby Ridge as the cause for his destruction. After all, he bombed the Murrah building 2 years to the day after the deadly conclusion of Waco. April 19. He believed the government was going to disarm its citizens and he was enraged by that. Back then, there was some legislation regarding gun control.

He said he chose that federal building because it offered him an easy getaway and afforded us an unobstructed view of the destruction. I don't think he gave a rat's ass about the children he killed. Supposedly, he knew they were there, right above where he detonated the bomb, although he denied it. He said they were collateral damage. He said of the victims and survivors that they needed to get over it. I feel like some of his bravado in those statements was posturing. But I truly believe he felt no remorse.

The further I've dug, the more there is. I've been sucked into that mess for awhile and I don't have any good answers for the oddities and the things that are still unaccounted for.

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There certainly is a lot to read about. I knew that he had stolen some of the materials but I had not yet read that he was involved in an armed robbery against a gun seller, so that might explain away some of the costs involved in procuring the materials for the bomb. In a documentary I watched, they claimed that John Doe [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] was actually an unrelated man who was also renting a vehicle at the same time as McVeigh. I don't know if that makes sense but I have seen a couple of other people suggested as having been his accomplice on that day.

If McVeigh was supported or funded by a militia group or others that frequented Elohim City, I wonder why he chose not to name them. Was it because he wanted sole credit, because he wanted to promote his own ideological message over theirs or because he did not want to implicate them? I know that he tried to minimize the involvement of the people that were discovered to be his accomplices.

One of the first things I wanted to know was why he chose to do this.
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He states his reasoning clearly but I would like to know how much of his motivation was truly ideological and how much of it was personal. Some killers claim to be politically or ideologically motivated but if you look at their lives, you can see that there was something lacking or some devastating failure on a personal level. I don't know yet whether McVeigh admitted to anything like that but I know Breivik went out of his way to look like his whole life was a success when it was not. I know McVeigh dropped out of his Special Forces assessment on the second day, supposedly because he was worn down from his recent military service, but he also claimed that he was already disillusioned with the government and military by then so I wonder if this factored in.

I think he probably did know that there were children there and possibly even chose his target because of it. They shot a young boy at Ruby Ridge and over twenty-five children died at Waco. Also, he mentioned in his writing that the military routinely kills children during their operations and refers to them as collateral damage. I think he subsequently denied it because he realized that people would immediately dismiss him as a monster and he would lose some of his potential supporters if they knew that he purposely targeted children or that he didn't care about killing children when he planned it. I don't think he felt remorse for killing the children or the adults. I think he may have felt that it was unfortunate that he "had to" kill those people but I think felt justified in doing it. He seemed too committed to his beliefs to regret it and too detached to feel any emotional reaction.

He said it was a "PR nightmare" that the children were killed in his bomb because it minimized the power of the message he was sending. That's about as cold and callous as you can get. He didn't regret it, not even for a second. Hell, the Unabomber even denounced his actions as unnecessarily inhumane. The Unabomber!

I think McVeigh wanted all the credit, all the glory. But I also think he protected those who likely helped him. Why? I don't know. Maybe he was truly a loyal friend or maybe he was selfish and wanted sole credit.

John Douglas did a sort of profile on him and I can't find it right now. I remember him saying that McVeigh would function well in a structured environment, as he did in the military and as an inmate. He also said there was an element of "sexual frustration". God knows we've seen that in a lot of the cases we discuss here.

Breivik is McVeigh and Cho combined. But I always laugh when I read about his hands burning from making the bomb and whining about other minute stuff. He was just so far out there, making up organizations, claiming he was the president. What he did was truly terrifying.

Little things like grenades/pipe bombs would be easier for people to carry or use during a mass shooting.

However, pressure cooker bombs and anything bigger would be just too heavy and cumbersome to carry with someone into a mass shooting. Unless they are brought in stages. Like carry all the heavy stuff first then bring the rest of the gear after.

Probably in the future we will see more VIBED's being used. Cars/trucks rigged to explode causing more damage/destruction.

In the future as well, there will be more variety used in attacks as well. Like a combination of guns/knives/other weapons used during an attack and maneuvers like, shooting and moving quickly from one area to another, decoys of fire/alarms/human shields during an attack, ambush setups when SWAT/police rush a building like setting a triggering device when they enter and more.

It seems that as these attacks occur both the police and the shooters learn more about preparing for future attacks.

Tomb wrote:

The reason I believe he had help is the sheer cost of the operation (he surely wasn't working on Wall Street, he wasn't working at all), he traveled all over the US for gun shows and eventually met up with The grandson of an original founder of the Nazis. His name is Andreas Strassmeier. I imagine he had great resources and power in that particular movement.

Here's a quote from the McVeigh autobiography concerning the cost of the bomb.

American Terrorist wrote:

Yet McVeigh denies that he planned the robbery of Moore to get cash for his bomb project. He took pride in the fact that the bomb, despite the massive destruction it would cause, was relatively inexpensive to create. Truck rental would cost him about $250, fertilizer less than $500. The nitromethane cost $2,780, and he would spend a few more bucks on a cheap junker to use as a getaway car. The whole project, he estimated, would cost no more than $5,000. “What’s five grand? There was no need to raise money; this was done on a shoestring budget,” McVeigh said, pressing the point that there was more to the robbery than just money—revenge.

According to this, it wasn't very expensive at all but I don't understand how 5,000 pounds of fertilizer cost him less than $500. I tried to figure it out by searching online but I could only find small amounts that would add up to be much more expensive than $500 (I think it was something like $10,000 if bought in 25 pound bags). Maybe it used to be cheaper and he bought the fertilizer in bulk, but it still seems like a low estimate.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] the nitromethane alone cost approximately $2,275. Nothing about this bomb was cheap, especially for a man who didn't work aside from robbing rich gun dealers.

Tomb wrote:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] the nitromethane alone cost approximately $2,275. Nothing about this bomb was cheap, especially for a man who didn't work aside from robbing rich gun dealers.

According to the book, Nichols stole nearly $60,000 in valuables from this gun dealer, including over $8,000 in cash. Even if McVeigh lied about the cost and the gun dealer inflated the value of missing items for insurance purposes, it seems like this single robbery would have been enough to cover the costs of the operation.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] absolutely. Between the robbery(ies) and the likely help from his "comrades", money wasn't an issue. The man who he and Nichols robbed knew it was McVeigh all along. McVeigh can say whatever he wants, but I firmly believe he couldn't have perpetrated the bombing without illicit funding.

Too hard to make a decent bomb. A lot of countries have probably made it harder to get bomb making equipment and it might explode while the person is making it. And there's a chance that the bomb won't work properly or even at all (like Columbine) and even if it does it probably wouldn't kill a lot of people so all the work spent making it most likely wouldn't be worth it.

Guest wrote:

He said it was a "PR nightmare" that the children were killed in his bomb because it minimized the power of the message he was sending.

It probably only increased the power due to children dying. It's more shocking. Sandy Hook is a good example of this.

Seriously, bombs are hard to make.
Look at the Recent London Parsons Green attack.
He forgot to seal up the gas in the bomb, and it just ended up being a free haircut for anyone in the area.
As more terrorists and Mass murderers try to kill as many as possible, their incompetence saves us.

some say IEDs are not used as they are hard to make, most of the suicide devices and bombs used by terrorists in Europe are fairly easy to construct, i think its that the modern day lone wolfs tend to think of it as hard to make or impractical instead of putting time into researching it and planning their attacks. groups like ISIL tend to use these devices effectively like seen in the Manchester Arena and also in the Suruc and ankara bombings in Turkey which killed both 32 and 102. The devices im talking about is the pressure based/TATP,peroxide style devices and Luckily some of the more recent lone wolfs and terrorists trying to use these style devices are fairly stupid and the devices never detonate which has shifted more onto vehicles and hand tools being used as weapons with the occasional firearm being used. i do think we'll see Bombing style attacks go down though.

i think it's due to the method of killing is less personal, i mean, think about it

to be a mass murderer, you have to be fucked in the head, and usually these people THINK (i personally think most mass murderers have caused their life problems by themselves) it's caused more by other people's actions. to construct a bomb to kill people probably wouldn't satisfy one, think about it. if eric and dylan only cared about killing people, they would have only setup the bomb in the cafeteria and call it a day, but they wanted more. they clearly wanted to personally ruin others, because they thought they were ruined by others

or maybe i'm wrong, but that's my theory

It is mostly difficult because of the lack of reliable information that isn't dated or inaccurate.

marlboro wrote:

i think it's due to the method of killing is less personal, i mean, think about it

to be a mass murderer, you have to be fucked in the head, and usually these people THINK (i personally think most mass murderers have caused their life problems by themselves) it's caused more by other people's actions. to construct a bomb to kill people probably wouldn't satisfy one, think about it. if eric and dylan only cared about killing people, they would have only setup the bomb in the cafeteria and call it a day, but they wanted more. they clearly wanted to personally ruin others, because they thought they were ruined by others

or maybe i'm wrong, but that's my theory

if you want high kills bombs are way more efficient, look at the one in Somalia like 320 died

-warrior wrote:

marlboro wrote:

i think it's due to the method of killing is less personal, i mean, think about it

to be a mass murderer, you have to be fucked in the head, and usually these people THINK (i personally think most mass murderers have caused their life problems by themselves) it's caused more by other people's actions. to construct a bomb to kill people probably wouldn't satisfy one, think about it. if eric and dylan only cared about killing people, they would have only setup the bomb in the cafeteria and call it a day, but they wanted more. they clearly wanted to personally ruin others, because they thought they were ruined by others

or maybe i'm wrong, but that's my theory

if you want high kills bombs are way more efficient

That's the point. They don't just want a high number of casualties and they are not necessarily going for efficiency. They want to know what it's like to play god with the lives of their victims, with the instrument of death held right in their own hand.

I think [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] is perfectly correct, at least for some killers. Adam Lanza wrote this a few days before his shooting:

Adam Lanza wrote:

While granting that modus operandi really isn’t that important, I just can’t get into vehicular slaughterers. It seem too mediated, like using remote explosives (too hot). And knives stray too far from the whole “mass” aspect (too cold). The aesthetic of pistols tends to be just right.

They want it to be personal.

marlboro wrote:

if eric and dylan only cared about killing people, they would have only setup the bomb in the cafeteria and call it a day

the original plan was to bomb the school and shoot people fleeing, they just sucked at building bombs

Just because bombs are harder to make.

Probably because of the risk of getting caught looking at bomb making instructions is too high.

Guest wrote:

I think McVeigh wanted all the credit, all the glory. But I also think he protected those who likely helped him. Why? I don't know. Maybe he was truly a loyal friend or maybe he was selfish and wanted sole credit.

My theory is that it functions as a middle finger to the government he hated. The whole reason McVeigh ended up pleading not guilty was to make the government work as hard as possible to convict him beyond the shadow of a doubt, so I assume he wasn't going to give anyone up willingly. Reminds me of John Wayne Gacy's last words: "Kiss my ass, you'll never find the rest".

Vladislav Roslyakov was successful with his bombs, and initially most people thought it was a terrorist attack with multiple people involved.

Bombs are complicated and scary.

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