John Cassidy imagines the public reaction if the Boston bombers had instead used assault rifles:
Well, for one thing, the brothers would probably have killed a lot more than three people at the marathon. AR-15s can fire up to forty-five rounds a minute, and at close range they can tear apart a human body. If the Tsarnaevs had started firing near the finish line, they might easily have killed dozens of spectators and runners before fleeing or being shot by the police.
The second thing that would have been different is the initial public reaction. Most Americans associate bomb attacks with terrorists. When they hear of mass shootings, they tend to think of sociopaths and unbalanced post-adolescents.
The reason he thinks this mental exercise is useful:
My point is about perceptions and reality, and how the former can shape the latter. The Tsarnaevs did have at least one gun—evidently a pistol, rather than the mini-arsenal originally reported—which they apparently used to kill an M.I.T. police officer, but that wasn’t what kept an entire city locked indoors: it was the fact that there were “terrorists,” who had carried out a bombing, on the loose. As I pointed out the other day, numerically speaking, terrorism, especially homegrown terrorism, is a minor threat to public safety and public health. It pales in comparison to gun violence.
The Dish 