Oklahoma City Bombing Case Study

The following essay aims to analyse the motivations behind the Oklahoma City bombing of the 19th April 1995. Timothy McVeigh, a right wing extremist and gun rights advocate caused the blast by detonating a truck bomb outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building[1]. After the biggest criminal investigation in U.S history, McVeigh was found guilty of mass murder in 1997 and was subsequently executed by lethal injection in 2001. The bombing was the largest act of domestic terrorism in the United States and was the deadliest since the September 11 2001 attacks. The bomb blast “killed 168 people, including twenty-one children, and injured more than 500 others”. [2] Terry Nichols was also sentenced to lifetime imprisonment for being a co conspirator in the attack with McVeigh[3].

The criminological theory which most reflects Timothy McVeigh’s viewpoints and motivation for the bombing is that of drift and neutralisation, which was first expounded upon by Gresham Skyes and David Matza in a 1957 article entitled Techniques of Neutralisation: A Theory of Delinquency[4]. As a

[6] The motivations for the bombing and McVeigh’s drift into rationalising his behaviour can be found in his radical sub cultural ideology. McVeigh viewed himself as a patriot who believed that owning a gun was a rightful sign of freedom and increasingly grew to dislike the government, in what he saw as an all two powerful evil, “The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful, and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control”. [7] Tighter government regulations on firearms, as seen in the 1993 Brady Bill was viewed as a serious threat to individual freedoms.[8] Such sub cultural values were so strong within McVeigh who claimed “when guns are outlawed, I will become an