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
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. :-)