The Boston Marathon Bombing

The Boston Marathon is an annual marathon hosted by several cities in Greater Boston in eastern Massachusetts. It is always held on Patriot’s Day, the third Monday in April. Begun in 1897, the Boston Marathon is the world’s oldest annual marathons and ranks as the world’s best-known road-racing events (“Boston Bombing,” n.d.). But on April 15, 2013, the marathon made history for something else. At approximately 2:49 EST, two pressure cooker bombs struck near the finish line of the marathon, leaving three dead and one hundred and forty one injured. Among the injured, twelve were reported in critical condition. The victims, who were treated in eight different hospitals, were as young as two (Lev, 2013). The suspects, brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, engaged the authorities in a violent endgame that unfolded four days after the bombing and just one day after the FBI released surveillance camera images of two young men suspected of planting the pressure cookers explosives at the marathon finish line (Lindsay & Sullivan, 2013). During the night of violence, starting Thursday and leading into Friday, the brothers killed an MIT police officer, severely injured another lawman, and hurled explosives at police in a desperate getaway attempt (Lindsay & Sullivan, 2013). Tamerlan, the older of the two suspects, died earlier that day, while the search for Dzhokhar was still active (Lindsay & Sullivan, 2013). However, later that Friday night, they tracked the 19-year-old college student down. He was hiding in a boat after he had been weakened by a gunshot wound (Lindsay & Sullivan, 2013). A law enforcement source told CNN that the Boston Marathon bombing victims were “collateral damage in a strike meant as payback for U.S. wars in Musl... ... middle of paper ... ...eems to override commitment to preserve the values of the broader social context and, in fact, allows for their violation; it is their ideological beliefs that fuel and justify their activity (Shechory & Laufer, 2008). Also, it has been proven that bonding to a delinquent person increases delinquency and the younger brother had an attachment to his brother, who already exemplified weakened social bonds, making it that much easier for Dzhokhar to follow behind his brother. Conclusion In conclusion, Hirschi’s social bond theory can be applied and used to describe the actions of the Boston bombers because there is evidence of weakened bond in the brothers. Although Dzhokhar’s had strong ties to conventional norms and values, being under the influence of his brother weakened at least one of his bonds, which led him into being a part of his brother’s plan.