Thoughts on the past week

It’s wonderful that the combined police forces captured the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing. It’s amazing that they got this solved and hopefully ended in such a short time.

It’s amazing, with the type of bomb that the murders used, that there were only three people killed at the race site. And with the amount of gunfire that was exchanged during the pursuit, there was only one person killed and one seriously wounded. (I’m not counting the bomber killed by the police. )

A number of the injuries that were sustained were definitely life-altering (amputations, etc.) and are terrible. I don’t mean to belittle any of the horror and tragedy of what happened in Boston last week.

But to a large extent, the murderers got what they were after - death and mayhem, disruption of everyday life, attention to their cause (whatever it might turn out to be), and the constant focus of the media on them and their lives. They definitely got their “15 minutes of fame”.

But suddenly the six adults and twenty children murdered in Newtown, CT, have been put on the back burner. The despicable vote by the Senate to defeat a bill to expand background checks on gun sales was barely mentioned.

And the fertilizer plant explosion that has killed at least 14, injured scores more, and destroyed most of the town of West, TX, was all but totally ignored. Somehow, the number of fatalities in West would seem to justify its being the top news story, but there has been constant coverage from Boston.

Again, the bombers seemed to have accomplished their objectives.