You don't need to freak out about cosmic new threats to U.S. national security, either. The Boston Marathon bombing was tragic and criminal whether it was carried out by a foreign terrorist group or a home-grown nutcase. But keep it in perspective: Ordinary criminal homicide claims more than 5,000 times as many American lives each year than this attack. Ordinary criminal homicide has claimed far more lives than international terrorism every single year in recorded history, and car accidents kill twice as many Americans as homicide. And as I noted above, with the exception of 2011, lightning strikes have claimed more American lives each year in the past decade than terrorist attacks. An attack that kills three people is criminal and sad, but it does not represent an existential danger to the United States.
This means you don't need to urge President Obama to go find a foreign country to attack in response. Maybe the Boston bomber(s) were inspired by Inspire, al Qaeda's online magazine, which contains helpful articles such as "How to Build a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom." Maybe they were inspired by decades-old anarchist literature, also readily available on the web, or by any of a thousand other sites that offer how-to advice to aspiring mass murderers of all nationalities and political stripes. Either way, invading another country -- or stepping up drone strikes on suspected militants in far-off lands --isn't likely to solve the problem that currently faces us, which is that an enterprising sociopath of any race, religion, nationality, or creed can easily obtain weapons, materiel, and just enough expertise to do some serious harm.
You also don't need to beg the government to install more security cameras. Most commercial enterprises already make use of security cameras, and most of your fellow citizens already carry their own portable security cameras these days -- a.k.a. cellphones. Look how easily Reddit's Internet sleuths have zeroed in on particular faces in the Boston crowd, using multiple photos provided mainly by marathon watchers. (That's for better or for worse -- the crowd-sourcing process is also misidentifying as "suspicious" many perfectly innocent people.)
At the end of the day, there just isn't much most ordinary people should do in immediate response to events such as the Boston bombings. We can take common sense security measures, but we can't eliminate all terrorism any more than we can eliminate all crime or prevent all accidental deaths. We live in an imperfect world. The best we can do is cultivate resilience and learn how to intelligently manage risk.
Second best: Let's quit whining and quit yapping. A small number of Americans have something terrible to grieve about as a result of Monday's bombing. The rest of us should show our respect by not trying to horn in on their grief -- and by shutting up until we actually have some information worth sharing.
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