Millions of people stayed at home an entire day, frightened, watching the news and waiting for a 19 year old to be captured by a heavily militarized police force? In the 21st century? During peace time? In a first world country?
If the US can't afford billions of dollars to prevent the murder of potentially dozens more innocents and the extremely quick capture of such dangerous criminals, then what the heck is the point of all that money.
Lifetime? Now that is an amplification.
Security theater in the U.S. has cost many thousands of lives in the past ten years, for nothing.
Exceptions can be made for exceptional circumstances. If, God forbid, terrorism on US soil becomes commonplace, then his point is no longer applicable (since his point is about rare things).
Evidently he wasn't bleeding enough when he exited the carjacked Mercedes for dogs to follow him, so they knew roughly where he was, but drew the cordon a little too small (he was really into soccer, probably a good runner).
So with enough surveillance, if he'd moved after daylight he might have been caught. Then again, the authorities denied themselves the use of thousands of eyeballs of Watertown subjects, who would have likely recognized him from the description (the point about blood above is that I'm assuming they assumed he wasn't bleeding heavily, a much stronger tell).
And it was one of those subject's eyeballs after they came back into play that resulted in the end of the hunt. Given what we know now, it was a mistake. Given what I'm assuming they knew then, it was not obviously one.
"it [sends a] message: if you set off bombs in a public space, we will shut down the city and hunt you like vermin until we find you."
Of course, that only works if they actually do find you, which they didn't, although they might be able to spin it that way.
Correlation does not imply causation. If you seriously follow these sorts of studies, you'd know not to trust anything coming from the VPC (well, maybe they've done a good one, but I'm not aware of any, and helped Clayton Cramer destroy their "Concealed Carry Killers" http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2095754).
And that's irrelevant to my point about the historical definition of a citizen in a republic. You aren't anymore, and whatever good you may think that does you, it still does not change that fact.
Again, I am unclear on your definition of our citizenship. Are you suggesting that this event altered it?
And I attacked the source because I've actually done serious research on their work (well, as one of several minions of Clayton's). It's hard to retain respect for an organization when you track down incidents of "Concealed Carry Killers" and find out many never even had a concealed carry license. Or the guy with the licence didn't hurt anyone (albeit he was an idiot). Or the license was irrelevant, a fumble plus a defective weapon resulted in a true accidental death. Etc.; did you take a glance at the paper I linked to, like I did at the VPC paper?
Not to mention I know their history of deliberate lying propaganda, Josh Sugerman is a twisted genius, e.g. he had the whole campaign against "assault weapons" planned out a year or two before Stockton. The VPC is by far the best "think tank" of the gun grabbers (compare to the Joyce Foundation squandering millions trying to establish a "collective right" interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, which 9 out 9 Supreme Court justices disagreed with).
To your latter question, no. The traditional historical definition of a citizen in a republic was one who bore arms in defense of it, at least when called upon to. To bring this to American particulars, if you're a citizen or have declared an intention of becoming one and are between 17 and 44 years of age inclusive, you are a member of the unorganized militia (10 USC § 311). But if your state denies you the right to keep and bear arms, or makes that hard, expensive and legally dangerous, so very few do, including I gather you ... I call you a subject, not a citizen.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc