firefox reports "bus error" after update

[Andrew Kane]

After last night's updates, Firefox will no longer start.

When I attempt to start it from terminal it returns "Bus error".

A quick Googling indicates that the "solution" to this is to remove
and reinstall firefox. This is a bone-headed solution IMO, and I'm
looking for:

a) the reason this is happening
b) how to prevent it in future

Honestly, "Bus error?" What kind of error message is that? My computer
has a lot of buses, and that's not even counting software components
like dbus which are *called* buses. What kind of error? This is the
same as failing silently, except more baffling.