Austin bombing suspect Mark A. Conditt proposed ending sex offender registry, blog says

In 2012, when he was 17 years old, Austin bombing suspect Mark Conditt laid out his political views in a series of blog posts he wrote for an Austin Community College course on the U.S. government.

No motive for the bombings has been disclosed, either by the bomber or by authorities. Four bombings in Austin over 17 days left two people dead and four injured. Another bomb exploded in a FedEx distribution facility, and one unexploded bomb was found at another distribution center, officials said. Authorities identified the 23-year-old Conditt as the bombing suspect who died in a bomb explosion during a confrontation with police early Wednesday, the American-Statesman and KVUE have reported, citing local and federal law enforcement sources.

In the blog, Conditt described himself as a conservative. It's not clear whether politics played any role in the bombings, but the blog posts provide insight into Conditt's thinking as he was growing up.

He wrote that he was against gay marriage and abortion and in favor of the death penalty.

He also wrote that he supported doing away with the sex offender registration system.

“So you have a guy who committed a crime. Will putting him on a (sex offender) list make it better? wouldn’t this only make people shun him, keep him from getting a job, and making friends? Just for a crime that he may have committed over 15 years ago as a adolescent? On a side note, one fifth of all rapes are committed by a juvenile,” Conditt wrote.

On abortion, he wrote: “First, if a women does not want a baby, or is incapable of taking care of one, she should not participate in activities that were made for that reason. Second, if we are going to give women free abortions, why not give men free condoms, or the like? Is it not up to the couple to take these preventive measures?”

Arguing against gay marriage, he wrote that homosexuality is “not natural.”

“Just look at the male and female bodies. They are obviously designed to couple. The natural design is apparent. It is not natural to couple male with male and female with female. It would be like trying to fit two screws together and to nuts together and then say, “See, it’s natural for them to go together,” he wrote.

Conditt attended ACC from 2010 to 2012, but never graduated, a school spokesperson told the Texas Tribune.

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