Chris, there are plenty of bombings with 1 or even 0 fatalities. The Unabomber’s letter bombs were rarely fatal, they were just too small to do more than blow off hands and blind people unless the surroundings helped concentrate the blast. Organized crime hitmen frequently attempt assassination by car bombing, and generally try to pick a time when the target will be driving alone, and size the bomb so it’s unlikely to kill anyone out of the car. But if you really want to kill a lot of people at once, the only thing that beats a big bomb in a crowded place is a nuke.

Wonder which one Waco fell under, explosives or arson? I didn’t see any “massive .gov screwup” category.

I don’t remember any bombings with mass deaths exept the WTC in ‘93 and Olympic Park in ‘96…

Oklahoma City — 161 deaths I think.

What the chart shows is how many are killed, on average, by method of death. There, guns come in lowest, at 4.85 average dead per incident, behind arson at 8.5 or so and explosives at 86.

So guns are by far the most common, but they don’t kill as many people per attack. I’m guessing the explosives are extremely infrequent-I don’t remember any bombings with mass deaths exept the WTC in ’93 and Olympic Park in ’96, unless you count 9/11 as explosives-and the two I mentioned I don’t think either got up to 86 dead. So the numbers skew kind of easily.

Now, if Harris and Klebold’s bombs had worked, Columbine might have pushed that average up.