[bridgeyman]

Everyone was pretty scared after the marathon bombing. In the days after, there were tons of bomb warnings as everyone reported anything even semi-suspicious. My neighbors even reported an Amazon package for me because it wasn't delivered by UPS!

Once there was a cop killed on our campus, followed by robberies and a car chase with bombs, things were looking pretty grim. If they weren't caught, the next few weeks would have felt very unsafe. After the drama with the lockdown and the suspects being caught then the atmosphere went from really insecure to people actually celebrating. If it was just a piece of theater, it was pretty effective.

[hga]

His comparison to the Beltway sniper is apropos.

I happen to be someone who's connected to both, one of my stomping grounds was Building 20 where I founded a student run computing center with the Logo Lab's surplus PDP-11/45, serial number 413 (so 313th made), the Stata Center replaced it.

And the woman killed in Virginia at the Home Depot ... well, that was "my" Home Depot, as well as the location of a favorite Chinese restaurant, it was even pretty easy to figure out where the sniper likely fired from.

Were we "scared" in the D.C. region? You better believe it, I certainly didn't go outside without wearing my body armor and carrying my handgun, but we didn't shut down the region. Then again, look at the above, Virginia is shall issue and well armed, Maryland is seldom issue but still well armed, Massachusetts has done just about everything it can to disarm its population....

[kvb]

I don't think it's apropos at all. The snipers were killing individuals, not maiming hundreds at a time. And I don't see how the level of gun ownership matters (in either case). How was carrying your handgun going to help you if the sniper shot at you? How would it have helped MA residents?

[hga]

At me, and hit me? None.

Only one shot? Based on what I've read, you can never locate the source, especially since the sonic boom of a supersonic projectile is in a likely different direction.

But it did put a limit on what they could achieve. If they'd attempted a mass shooting and then to run away, if not immediately taken down I would have found cover and shot back. And probably wouldn't have been alone.

They went to great and successful lengths to be covert (didn't help that the guy leading the hunt was an idiot and they did the usual "it's got to be a white man" profiling vs. the Sudden Jihad Syndrome it turned out to be ... the police even stopped them once, but they obviously weren't enemies of the state...). You can't rule out the area being well armed as one of the reasons.

As for MA, they were armed, and since they had to get around the law to get that way almost certainly knew if they broke into a house or apartment the residents couldn't have fought back. My big fear during the manhunt was that the police would bust into a dwelling and find the suspect plus the dead bodies of the residents....

[Evbn]

Congratulations that you are capable of handling a threat profile (mass shooting event) that is completely different from what actually happened in DC. Lucky for the rest of us, the police in Boston are capable of handling a wider array of threats.

And BTW, DC was partially locked down for weeks, by civilians: my outdoor rec sports league cancelled itself out of fear of snipe threatsm

[hga]

I guess you didn't get my point, so I'll put it another way: to my knowledge, except for the Arizona Congresswoman shooting, all the recent mass shooting events going back to Stockton happened in so called "gun free zones".

We in the RKBA community don't think that's coincidental.