Like a bomber would use his own name or a real ID when buying his supplies in the first place.
There is a reason why every country in the world save Switzerland stopped requiring taggents; and it obviously wasnt the NRA…
Blaming the NRA for a rare and random bombing makes about as much sense as blaming the ACLU for many rapes and murders because the ACLU makes it harder to arrest and convict rapists and murderers by arguing that the government respect the constitutional rights of the evil.
It doesn’t matter. Where and when it was purchased can narrow down an investigation from a thousand suspects to five.
I have no idea if the NRA supports taggants or not. Their current SOP is to oppose anything sensible on guns and the same people arguing against taggants seem to be the same people that go along with the NRA on everything.
It would not narrow down the suspect list to anywhere near 5. Gunpowder/blackpowder is not dynamite. Many more people buy it and it is bought much more frequently; thus batches would be much bigger. Also,I wonder, whether internet sales would allow the baddies to buy their explosives from some country that didnt mandate taggents?
Also lets not forget that taggents were inside dynamite. Whats to say that they couldnt be filtered/removed from powder?
Abby would *never *say anything like that. 
No, you know as well as we do she’d have all ten taggants identified and PDF"s of the sales slips on-screen in about two seconds.
Then Garcia would have the perps identified in about two seconds more.
I’m not sure taggants would have sped up finding the bombers in this case.
If we have a thousand suspects and less than 0.5 % of all gunpowder sales occurs at the same time and the same place then you would get less than 5 suspects, that’s basic math. Unless you are suggesting that all gunpowder sales typically take place at the same time and place, your argument makes zero sense.
Only because events overtook the forensics. If the Tsarnaevs had laid low instead, then yes, of course identifying the origin of the explosive material could have helped.
Yet somehow, for some reason they can’t or won’t publicly explain and defend, some people would have opposed that.
Well, it kinda depends on how determined they are, and the nature of that determination, doesn’t it? And that’s the point.
Some will be sufficiently determined to build an untraceable bomb that they will gain sufficient skill in mixing the ingredients of gunpowder to make a bomb that’s every bit as good as if they’d bought commercial gunpowder. Some will be sufficiently determined to build a bomb, but shrug and accept the added risk of being identified after the fact that comes with using commercial gunpowder. My primary point is that these latter people exist. You don’t seem to have stated a position on this.
Some, I suppose, will be sufficiently deterred to not build bombs. These are the people you’re saying don’t exist. I think they probably do, but that isn’t my real point (I’m not claiming taggants in gunpowder and ammonia-based fertilizer ingredients would keep people from building bombs; I’m saying it would help in identifying the bombers afterwards), and it’s not worth the argument to me. So I’m not sure whether we have a meaningful disagreement.
The quantities of taggants that would be necessary are so small that they would need some pretty specialized knowledge to do it. It probably could not be done without ruining the powder. Even if they could be removed, every barrier to making easy explosives helps.
If they make their own gunpowder, they will want to test it somehow, and that will get attention.
Do you have a reading disability, Bricker?
That shit (no pun intended) only works on a very small scale such as in your yard. It’s just not possible to grow enough food for everyone at a cost that they can afford without using modern synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.
And, if used right, the synthetic chemicals (pesticides in particular) can be safer than the “natural” alternatives- applying the exact amount of the right pesticide for a particular pest can be much more targeted and have less environmental impact than using relatively large quantities of somewhat less effective “natural” pesticides.
You wouldn’t know when any hypothetical suspects bought it, and likely wouldn’t have any identification of the suspects unless you require each and every purchase of anything containing gunpwder to be recorded with photo ID. Sutff from the same huge batches would be sold across half the United States.
Not at all. Obviously the distinction between gunpowder and high explosives is clear to you. I made the comment to highlight the distinction to the OP.
I have dozens of pounds of gunpowder laying around for reloading and black powder shooting. Most of it was purchased years ago (gunpowder basically has a infinite shelf life). If I decided to construct a bomb, how would a ‘taggant’ help law enforcement find me, if the gunpowder was bought half a decade ago? You’re horrifically stupid.
Ah yes, the old “it won’t take care of every last situation, so it’s a stupid idea” fallacy. Good to see you - you’re holding up well after all these years.
No matter. As long as only 0.5% of the gun powder supply has that taggant, you’ve cut your suspects by 99.5%.
Not the objection, fool. The objection is: it would take care of so few situations that it has no practical utility. But you don’t know this, because to you, all things that go “boom” are the same mysterious and scary substance.
Hitler made the Jews wear yellow badges. Now liberals want gunpowder to wear chemical badges. Jesus wept.
Leaving aside the fact that you have no fucking idea how many murders it would help solve, Counselor: Just how many unsolved *murder *cases do you think society should accept in order to avoid even the slightest bit of inconvenience to a few hobbyists?
Evidence right there that an adult-level answer cannot be expected of you. But we can still hope, forlornly though it may be.
Meanwhile, this appears to be yet another case of “This is something the Dumbocraps might be for, so I have to be against it”, isn’t it?
Given what Smiling Bandit said in his post above:
…I think we can safely say that the number of murderers who would be caught solely because a taggant was added to gunpowder would approximate zero.