Despite the backing of longtime NRA backer Harry Reid and conservative Republican Pat Toomey, the Senate failed on Wednesday to muster enough support to pass a compromise measure tightening background checks for gun purchases.

The vote was 54-46 in favor of the amendment, which is six votes short of the number needed to defeat any GOP delaying tactics.

Two days after twin bombs hit the Boston Marathon, leaving three dead and 183 others hospitalized, two suspicious-looking letters, one on its way to the Capitol Hill office of Sen. Roger Wicker and another addressed to President Obama, have been been intercepted and tested positive for the poison ricin.

Authorities say they see no connection between the suspicious letters and the Boston attacks. Still, the back-to-back events are unsettlingly reminiscent of the 9/11 attacks and the weeks that followed, during which several members of Congress and the news media received letters laced with the deadly bacteria anthrax.

I am a 27-year-old woman. I am a daughter and a sister. I am a nurse. I am a competitive athlete, a runner. I am an American. I am a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church. I used to spew hate. I was the ultimate bully.

When I learned about the senseless social media campaign that Westboro members began on Monday with messages like, “God Sent the Bombs,” I decided I couldn’t remain silent. The church feeds off publicity, so it feels dangerous to discuss them at all, but I think it’s important to stand up to them rather than remain silent, to speak out against their hate as silence does not deliver justice.

It didn’t take long after the bombs exploded in Boston for the online haters and petty partisans to rear their ugly heads.

Radio host Alex Jones suggested on Twitter that the bombings may have been a “false flag” operation staged by the Obama administration itself.

After his wife, former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, was nearly assassinated two and a half years ago, former astronaut Mark Kelly became a gun-control activist who, with Giffords, founded a gun-safety organization called Americans for Responsible Gun Solutions. The couple is in Washington this week to lobby senators to support legislation to expand background checks for gun buyers. They have joined forces with another group activated by tragedy, the families of the Newtown victims, doubling down on the power of their collective experience in what history will record as the personalization of gun-control lobbying.

Kelly says that in a series of one-on-one meetings with members of Congress, the lawmakers were cordial and respectful to Giffords, but too often noncommittal on support for gun legislation. Having the Newtown families in the room can be a first step in changing the dynamic, and can even seal the deal. “When you meet with parents who have lost a 6 year old, it’s difficult to look that person in the face and say you’re not going to do anything,” says Kelly.

A key component of the bombs used yesterday in the attacks on the Boston Marathon resemble the kind of homemade bomb al Qaeda has encouraged English-speaking terrorists to use.

The Daily Beast has confirmed with U.S. counter-terrorism officials that the bombs placed Monday at the marathon were made from pressure cookers, a crude kind of explosive favored by insurgents in Pakistan and Afghanistan. A recipe for a bomb that uses the pressure cooker was part of the debut issue of Inspire, the English-language online magazine of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

For years a simple message has been posted, in one form or another, all over public transport in Boston: “See Something. Say Something … Instincts tell you to do something? Do something. Call this number …” One sees much the same slogan in New York, in Washington, or for that matter in Paris and London. Public vigilance is an important part of preventing terrorist attacks. And if bystanders on Boylston Street in Boston near the marathon finish line on Monday had seen a couple of stray backpacks, or someone dumping too-large packages into garbage cans, and said “something,” maybe—just maybe—three people would be alive today and more than a hundred could have been saved from injury.

But the first, most important line of defense against terrorist attack is not the public, and it’s not even the cops. It’s not metal detectors or high-tech aerial surveillance. And it’s certainly not the threat of after-the-fact jail time for the bombers in this age of suicidal terrorism.

As yesterday’s statistics in Boston—three dead, more than 100 seriously injured—turn into specific, heartbreaking human stories, the role of the emergency rooms scattered throughout Boston will fade quickly into the background. This is as it should be; emergency health care is the job of the emergency room, after all. But the roles of hundreds of doctors, nurses, and other staff will be forever traumatized by what they witnessed, as described so vividly in December after the Newtown shootings. 

I worked as an attending doctor in New York City ERs for four years, but I never had to deal with anything like what Boston's ERs handled yesterday. You just don’t see these types of injuries in an urban American hospital. In fact, ERs are usually boring places to work. Yes, there are moments of TV-worthy drama and tension, but in general, serviceable health care is delivered as quickly as possible with a forced smile.