Wait a second. How can you be "pretty familiar" with Columbine and also assert that "The Columbine shooting didn't involve a planted bomb" and "The boys just showed up to school shooting", neither of which assertions actually turns out to be true?
I get that you don't want to consider this as the counter-example that you're looking for. That's fine. And I grant you that there was no phone call in advance; I never said there was. I thought this was a good example in the spirit of the question, as your implication seems to be "and therefore there never will be".
Your third assertion is just as meaningless as your first two. It doesn't matter whether or not there ever has been. What matters is this: there very easily could be.
I knew Harris and Klebold had brought bombs with them, although I'll admit I'd forgotten about the bomb that didn't go off they'd set outside.
When I said "planted bomb", what I was thinking of was a situation where the bomber visits the intended target site in advance, stealthily hides the bomb, sets at timer (or remote detonator) and then leaves. Later the bomb goes off with the intent of killing people.
I don't consider Columbine to be similar to this in spirit because 1) the boys brought the bomb with them that day; it wasn't set up "in advance". 2) the bomb wasn't intended to hurt people, really; it was to draw people out so the boys could shoot them. And, of course, there was no "bomb threat" call, either. This was a travel-to-the-site school shooting that just happened to involve a(n) (unsuccessful) bomb, which I believe to be very different in spirit from something like the OKC bombing.
You rightly complain that I'm hand-wavy, but I'd assert that even if there very easily could be such a bomb, it DOES matter that there never has been.
The goal of a terrorist is to create fear in the population at large. One of my goals as a school teacher is to reduce unfounded fear among students and parents.
Parents already have enough to worry about. There are real, likely worries: my child will be in a car accident. There are real but unlikely worries: my plane will crash. And then below that are technically-possible-but-still-unlikely-and-have-never-even-happened worries: the bomb threat at my school represents a danger to my child.
I'm not saying school violence isn't a legitimate worry, just that a bomb in a school with a phone call beforehand ought to be pretty low on what's already a pretty insignificant risk.
Comments
Yes, I'm pretty familiar with Columbine. What you seemed to have missed in my question were the words "bomb threat".
When has anyone called a school and said "I've planted a bomb" and then a bomb ended up actually being there? I assert never.
Wait a second. How can you be "pretty familiar" with Columbine and also assert that "The Columbine shooting didn't involve a planted bomb" and "The boys just showed up to school shooting", neither of which assertions actually turns out to be true?
I get that you don't want to consider this as the counter-example that you're looking for. That's fine. And I grant you that there was no phone call in advance; I never said there was. I thought this was a good example in the spirit of the question, as your implication seems to be "and therefore there never will be".
Your third assertion is just as meaningless as your first two. It doesn't matter whether or not there ever has been. What matters is this: there very easily could be.
I knew Harris and Klebold had brought bombs with them, although I'll admit I'd forgotten about the bomb that didn't go off they'd set outside.
When I said "planted bomb", what I was thinking of was a situation where the bomber visits the intended target site in advance, stealthily hides the bomb, sets at timer (or remote detonator) and then leaves. Later the bomb goes off with the intent of killing people.
I don't consider Columbine to be similar to this in spirit because 1) the boys brought the bomb with them that day; it wasn't set up "in advance". 2) the bomb wasn't intended to hurt people, really; it was to draw people out so the boys could shoot them. And, of course, there was no "bomb threat" call, either. This was a travel-to-the-site school shooting that just happened to involve a(n) (unsuccessful) bomb, which I believe to be very different in spirit from something like the OKC bombing.
You rightly complain that I'm hand-wavy, but I'd assert that even if there very easily could be such a bomb, it DOES matter that there never has been.
The goal of a terrorist is to create fear in the population at large. One of my goals as a school teacher is to reduce unfounded fear among students and parents.
Parents already have enough to worry about. There are real, likely worries: my child will be in a car accident. There are real but unlikely worries: my plane will crash. And then below that are technically-possible-but-still-unlikely-and-have-never-even-happened worries: the bomb threat at my school represents a danger to my child.
I'm not saying school violence isn't a legitimate worry, just that a bomb in a school with a phone call beforehand ought to be pretty low on what's already a pretty insignificant risk.
I can live with that. :-)