Entirely homemade
Apr 25, 2013, 7:12 AM | Updated: 12:07 pm
(AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
>>>Police: Boston suspects planned to attack New York
The latest from the Homeland Security committee seems to confirm what a lot of people still find hard to believe.
The Tsarnaev brothers acted on their own, and used the kind of commonly available equipment and explosives that anyone could buy – and buy legally.
So – the gunpowder? Maryland Democratic Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger, member of the Homeland Security Committee, says it looks like they got those from a fireworks stand.
“One of the brothers, I believe it was the oldest brother, went to a shop in New Hampshire and asked for the most volatile explosives – or that you’d get the best bang. That’s where some of the explosives came from,” said Ruppersberger.
The bomb trigger? A remote control for a toy car.
It takes some sophistication to adapt that to a bomb trigger, but frankly not a lot. Anyone who can measure voltage and use a soldering gun could do it. The assembly instructions are as close as the nearest computer.
“They got the information on how to build the bomb through “Inspire Magazine.” That magazine was put out to recruit people through Jihad,” said Ruppersberger.
So bottom line: anybody who wants to could do it. Which is why investigators are focused on what happened when Tamerlan took that six month trip to visit relatives in Dagestan. We have to know how he got radicalized. Since this is something that anyone could do, we have to figure out how to make sure no one wants to.