Different design, different trigger, different placement (roadside instead of on a front step), different part of town ... I suspect the fourth bomb might be either a copycat crime or a "revenge" bombing for nobody discovering yet who set the first three bombs, despite what the article says about all four bombings being related.
If it's a copycat, it is, by definite, related... albeit a rather stretched form of that definition. But yeah, definitely pointing towards it being a different person.
And it's over. A lucky break on a couple surveillance videos, some legwork, and the police had a suspect -- who then blew himself up rather than let himself be arrested, but not before leaving what amounted to a confession/manifesto on his cell phone.
New York Times story here.
What's kinda scary is that FedEx facility isn't far from where I live... Oh, it's a good 20 miles or so, but it's within the county, which is disquieting. I don't know where the package was heading, but if it was going to Austin, then he had shipped it from here in San Antonio. If he shipped it from Austin.... Well!
The fourth device, from what I understand, was not a copycat. It was the same basic device, only with a tripline trigger instead. It seems that the bomber was experimenting.
No word yet on his motives. They can't even find much of a connection between his intended targets. At this point I would say it's one of two things: he was either going totally random, or he was going after people that violated his intensely conservative christian sensibilities.
Thing is, while his family sounds very nice, the bomber himself sounds like old testament fire and brimstone - feels that LGBTQ people should not have any rights and that he was vehemently in favor of executions. I think his targets were not racially motivated, but intensely ideological. Maybe people that he viewed as traitors to the faith? I'm not sure, just throwing it out there.
But at any rate, this guy has been everything that I've been worried about and warning against. Someone who is certainly disturbed on a deep level and felt that guns were not the way to go. We haven't even gotten around to passing any real legislation about gun control.
Regardless, I hope that we don't get another mad bomber. A shooter I can at least take a chance with bumrushing them. A bomb? No.
Bombs are less likely compared to guns or melee weapons because of two reasons, I figure.
For one, bombs take a lot more effort. No seriously, explosives are harder to get your hands on than a gun and bullets, there's some extensive licensing in place in the US if I'm not mistaken. You can create your own, but that's not as easy as walking into a gun shop and buying a gun and bullets. Some people are able or willing to take that effort, but laziness will keep most would be mass murderers from doing so.
For another, bombs aren't viscerally satisfying. Or at least not as much so as pulling the trigger and seeing the effects of the bullet hitting someone. Given how personally offensive a lot of the targets hit by mass shooters are to the shooter that satisfaction has to be a factor, even if they expect to die in the doing.
I think it's the availability of firearms combined with ease of use. You can buy them pretty much anywhere. They're compact, portable, and you put in a cartridge and press a button to shoot. Basically the same skills you need to operate a Nintendo Game Boy. A person completely untrained with firearms can use one to kill. Honestly they might be more dangerous, depending on intent.
Bombs take effort. They take patience. They take longer than a three-day waiting period to make, unless you're skilled. And you can't just go buy them. You need licensing to buy explosives, and that's not even a bomb yet. Most people who make bombs have some deeply held beliefs, something to sustain anger over a long period. Otherwise, if you can make a bomb, you have enough skill and patience to go get a real job, and be a normal member of society.
That's kinda the thing -- your average university chemist knows enough to take down an airplane using things that probably aren't detected. There are lots of chemistry professors and postdocs and grads. And yet, hey, air travel goes on as normal every day, because people who have a decent life (yes, even postdocs lol) don't feel like they need to asplode anything. Or, y'know, they just find some fun chemicals and take them instead. Anyway what I'm really saying is the bombing threat is nearly orthogonal to the gun violence threat in the U.S.