Weapons of mass destruction

Sometimes you have to hand it to Slate to answer the questions you have but forget about too quickly to actually research.

When reading about the arrests of the Hutaree militia group members who had planned an attack against law enforcement professionals, it was mentioned (in the headline and the body) that they were charged with attempting to use “weapons of mass destruction,” but the stories explained that they had planned on using Improvised Explosive Devices, which are generally conventional in nature. “Weapons of mass destruction” is a term that is generally used to describe nuclear, biological or chemical weaponry. So, how are these so-called “militiamen” being charged with such an offense? Well, Brian Palmer, writing for Slate, explains, “When did IEDs become WMD?”

In 1994. Since its origins in the 1940s, the phrase weapons of mass destruction has typically referred to some combination of nuclear, biological, chemical, and radioactive weaponry. But, in a sweeping 1994 crime bill, Congress defined the term to include weapons previously known only as “destructive devices,” such as bombs, grenades, mines, and guns with a bore of more than one-half inch in diameter that are not common in sport hunting. Under U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2332a, murder by WMD is now one of 50 death-penalty-eligible federal offenses, along with treason, espionage, drive-by shooting, and murdering a member of Congress. There is nothing in the congressional record showing why then-Sen. Joseph Biden, who drafted the language, defined the term so broadly, but the bill was introduced a few months after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, in which conventional weapons killed six and wounded more than 1,000 people.

He goes further into the history of the terms, I recommend you read the whole (actually rather concise and brief) explanation.

Related posts:

1. We keep the “mass” in Christmass, so get to mass, jerks