According to a report at nbcnews.com Adam Lanza, who murdered twenty children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School yesterday, had tried to buy a rifle at a Dick’s Sporting Good store on Tuesday. “Adam Lanza, 20, went to a Dick’s Sporting Goods store in Danbury, Conn., on Tuesday to buy the weapon, but was turned down because he didn’t want to undergo a background check or abide by the state’s waiting period for gun sales, the officials said.” Wait, what? We’re so confused. We thought, based on the incessant on-air emoting of of the usual anti-2A talking heads that we need more laws to prevent someone like Lanza from buying a gun. More laws that would — in the vast majority of cases — make it harder for law-abiding citizens to buy firearms, too. See, we’d heard that “the reality is that in the United States of America in 2012, it’s easier in many states to rent an automobile — to buy an automatic weapon than it is to rent an automobile. It’s more demanding.” Apparently we were misinformed.

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74 COMMENTS

  1. “We thought, based on the incessant on-air emoting of of the usual anti-2A talking heads that we need more laws to prevent someone like Lanza from buying a gun”

    Pretty weasel words there, no big surprise. What most gun control people want is to prevent people like Lanza OBTAINING a gun, not just BUYING one. If his mother was not allowed to have guns either then where would he have OBTAINED them from?

    So much for the truth about guns.

    • He would have got a knife or hammer or poison or built a bomb. There are more ways to end human life than any number of laws can cover. Please do not let fear blind your judgement.

        • The story said he didn’t want to go through the background check or go through the waiting period. Period. Simple reading comprehension. Any other questions?

        • Connecticut has an age requirement of 21. He couldn’t purchase a gun in Connecticut because he wasn’t 21.

        • Honestly unless there was something that did in fact preclude him from purchasing a firearms, he could have waited and then done the evil thing he did, but he found another way. If it wouldn’t have been his mother, than maybe a friend. the pint is he didn’t wait, didn’t file paper work, didn’t follow the law. Oh but those laws… Who knew psychopathic criminals wouldn’t follow the law!

      • Like the maniac in China who went to a school and attacked 22 children with a knife only yesterday?

        Result – ZERO dead.

        And don’t talk to me about fear – I’ve been on the wrong side of a gun before. I didn’t sh*t myself and it didn’t turn me into a sniveling pussy who can only leave the house with a firearm either.

        • Take a little time and google china mass stabbings. There have been a few that resulted in multiple deaths. I know one resulted in at least 8 deaths.

    • Hmmmmm…

      Maybe you have a point but if he couldnt get a gun at all do you really think it would have stopped him? Do you know how easy it is to make an explosive device? Neutralize the teacher first and he could probably take out an entire classroom with a baseball bat before enough adults came to intervine.

      • Or how easy it would be to run his car up over the curb, ignoring the school zone speed limit, into a crowd of kids.

    • How many ms are there in hmmmmmmjob? Does mikey have more numbers than hmmmmmer has ms? If he did, would his handle be mikeybuchofnummmmmmmmmmbers? Why do keep more than one pet tr0ll when we can barely feed the one we already have? These are the questions that need answering.

        • Ralph would love that Matt – as a narcissist he feeds off people like you telling him how great he is.

        • I don’t see Ralph as a narcissist. Dude doesn’t take himself too seriously. Opposite of narcissism. You, on the other hand…

      • Ralph, I can barley afford to feed the welfare recipiants with nicer cars and bling than my own. The trolls are pecking away at my remains lol

      • Not as many as there are zzzzzzzz’s for me every time you open your mouth and some more tired, ignorant, OFWG dribble comes out ralphy.

        I do apologise if my debates take the center of attention away from you though – I know your swollen ego finds it very difficult to not be continually patted on the head and told how great you are.

        • Hmmmmm….

          So educated and proven facts and information bore you? Well, I guess thats why the antis have so little to say besides about shoulder things that go up

        • “So educated and proven facts and information bore you?”

          Well let’s just critique the latest round of “educated and proven facts and information” that ralph has provided in response to my very fair point that gun control people do not just want certain people prevented from “buying” guns, shall we. I think my my point was both fair and well stated, don’t you agree? It certainly contained nothing directed to ralph personally.

          And in riposte saint ralph gave me a round of insults and bile, such as he is capable of at least. So please, explain to me how he is on some higher path? He is a tedious boil on this message board, nothing more.

    • With people like Mr. Lanza the method does not matter. He wanted to make a statement. The fact is our laws work in the sense that he went to a gun store and tried to OBTAIN a gun. He was not able to. So he resorted to stealing, which is also a felony given that he stole firearms.

      He also committed murder, first he murdered the owner of the firearms, then went on his rampage. There has been speculation but no solid prof as far as I know regarding the mental status of Brian Lanza. His mother who was a law abiding citizen had every right to own firearms, and she did so within the guidelines of the strict laws of Connecticut. If there really were issues with his mental status and if Brian’s mother simply left them laying around than that is a problem that should be pointed out. I am not one to say don’t store your firearms safely, especially if you have children or people with issues in the house. But until we know all the facts, anything being said here is simply speculation.

      I was in Netanya during Passover March 27, 2002. At 9:30 PM a Hamas suicide bomber entered the park hotel with an innocent looking suitcase. The force of the explosion instantly killed 28 civilians and injured about 140 people, of whom 20 were injured severely. My family described it as 300 pounds of meat put through a blender.

      Bombs can be made with readily available household materials. They had to use mops to pick up what was left of many of the victims. Cars, hammers, knives, swords can all be used as weapons. Go look at the level of genocide and mass rapes and murders occurring in the Congo, or Daufor. Most of those folks are killed and maimed with machetes. Take a look at how many are killed or injured each year by drunk drivers on our roads. Israel does not have a high percentage of deaths due to firearms. Rockets and bombs are not even really that high, but even still Israel is one of the most heavily armed populations in the world.

      If you seriously think if somehow getting rid of all the evil guns would fix the issue of murders and other violent crimes please see what is being reported in the utopian gun free society of the United Kingdom:
      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/5712573/UK-is-violent-crime-capital-of-Europe.html

      “The total number of violent offenses recorded compared to population is higher than any other country in Europe, as well as America, Canada, Australia and South Africa. ”

      That means it is more dangerous to live and work in the UK instead of America. So much for your all guns are evil idea…

      • Before the collectivists and the Randian radical individualists normalized anti-social and deviant behaviors these sociopathic spree killers took other routes to kill their victims. They became clandestine serial killers like Ted Bundy. They killed 5, 10 or in Bundy’s case 38 people before they were caught. Most serials killers are never found. In real world the Mounties, the FBI and the CSIs of the LVPD don’t always get their man.

        Funny how things happens when you promote deviant behavior. You empower the deviant to evil things.

        I am shocked, shocked to find out there is gambling going on in the this establishment!

        • You are so brilliant.

          The deviant faced social coercion and most were forced to exercise some form self-control. Now their behavoir is celbrated and they are freed from constaint. (See Charlie Sheen for example)

        • “The deviant faced social coercion and most were forced to exercise some form self-control.”

          yet they didnt. that is why we had the crusades and the inquisition. you want more examples? i can provide plenty more. here’s the kicker: those horrendous acts were committed under the disguise of “morality” and “societal norms”.

          “Now their behavoir is celbrated and they are freed from constaint. (See Charlie Sheen for example)”

          and there are still consequences in dealing with the law.

          the only difference between then and now is that there are now 6 billion people on the planet and instant communications. of course “deviations” are more prominent. it is a statistical inevitability.

        • Wow, you have discovered that defective human beings have existed since time immemorial. I knew you had a decisive firepower advance because you have a Glock but now I see you have decisive mental power as well. I realize that self control doesn’t exist.

          Heah Bonomo, I am now a convert. Bunch of letters has convinced me that indeed you are correct in that all of us are subject to loss of self control and it is best we turn in our guns.

    • On what grounds would you deny the woman the right to buy a gun? For your idea to work, you’d have to deny firearms to all private citizens. Of course, in that case, the 300,000,000+ guns in this country would join millions more crossing the border in a vast black market.

    • “If his mother was not allowed to have guns either then where would he have OBTAINED them from?”

      so the solution is to infringe upon the rights of law abiding citizens?

      sorry. thats not going to cut it.

      only a statist would try to argue from that soapbox.

  2. You cannot legislate to end criminal insanity. Why is that concept so difficult to grasp? If the law impedes one of these disturbed individuals they will simply side step it.

  3. “Adam Lanza, 20, went to a Dick’s Sporting Goods store in Danbury, Conn., on Tuesday to buy the weapon, but was turned down because he didn’t want to undergo a background check or abide by the state’s waiting period for gun sales, the officials said.

    i cant find that quote anywhere in the linked article.

    • How about this one:

      “Officials also told NBC News that Lanza unsuccessfully tried to buy a rifle at a Dick’s Sporting Goods store in Danbury three days before the slaughter, but later said they could not confirm the report, which was based on information from members of the public.”

      NBCNews constantly updates and edits their stories, so the quote may have appeared differently when RF pulled it for this post.

      • Matt, I think that what you just said makes a pretty bold statement about the MSM and their search for the “truth.”

  4. I dont know the latest on what the police may have found in searches but this article sure dosnt suggest pre-meditation.

    Dont get me wrong, this guy is a monster but if he tried just days before to make this purchase in a state with a waiting period Id say he snapped pretty fast. Even Eric Harris and Dylan Kleibold (mostly Harris) planned for several months prior to the Columbine shooting.

    I wonder why he tried to make the purchase if he had access to guns the whole time

    • A twisted cry for help maybe? Given his familiarity with firearms he must have known that he wouldn’t be able to buy any off the shelf in a day.

      • Given the nature of this crime I have a feeling this was simply a means to an end.
        First we know, or believe that he had tried to purchase a firearm prior. This alone I believe could be considered pre-meditation.
        Given what we know about the events of that day, he woke up, killed his mother, then went on a rampage and killed himself. Why not just kill mom then yourself? I would assume any anger he held would be directed towards her, not kids he didn’t even know. If we think about Columbine, we could conclude that the shooting was directed at other students who had done some wrong towards them, although given the long history and evidence we have, I think again this was more of a means to an end.
        If the shooter had taken hostages and had a long drawn out stand off. This would be more of a cry for help. This person simply killed, ultimately killing himself. There was no cry for help or even communication for that matter. He wanted a body count, and then end it.
        When individuals act like this, there is no reasoning, there is no discussion. The only thing you can hope for is that there is some persons or person with the ability to end it, and end it quickly. Teachers and staff need the ability to protect their students regardless of threat type. Fifty years ago this type of threat would all be some sick and twisted nightmare. Today, we have bombings, bomb threats, shootings, stabbings, gang rape. All of these things have, or could happen on school grounds. Our school faculty needs to be able to deal with these things. The idea it couldn’t happen here is denial, and I am not talking about the river.
        There are things that could have been done to mitigate Columbine, Okios, VA Tech, and all the others. People need to look at incidents, whether someone died or not and have a serious discussion about how to stop something that has already started. The idea of prevention in many circumstances might sound nice, but then you end up creating laws or legislation that hurt people who are perfect law abiding citizens. Knee jerk reaction legislation on anything is bad, regardless of issue. It means it is reactionary legislation without full thought to long term consequences.

  5. The “facts” about this case keep changing in the media, now little Rambone shot his way into the building rather than being “buzzed in because he was a familiar face due to his mother teaching there.”

    This shooter also seemed to be pretty proficient with firearms handling, reloading and target acquistion considering there is no record of him using any firing ranges, gun clubs or being known to even own firearms. Curious.

    • I don’t see much evidence that he was good at any of those things.

      According to several different accounts, the shooter started his attack in the front office. Someone turned on the intercom so that the rest of the school could hear the chaos in the office. That may (I say MAY) suggest that he was still in the office at that time. Given that there are almost no wounded, only fatalities, I am doubtful that he was firing the length of the hallway at people. I haven’t seen anything definitive yet about where most of the carnage took place, but my suspicion is that most, if not all, of the children were killed in one classroom. 20 children is about the right size for a class. When the word went out over the school that there was a shooter, many of the teachers responded by locking the door and huddling the class in the corner of the room. If he entered any of those classrooms he would have found all of his victims grouped together in the corner. Even if they weren’t all grouped together, it doesn’t take any skill whatsoever to shoot a child across a distance of a classroom. People have said that they heard “hundreds” of shots. I seriously doubt he fired that many rounds, but the adrenaline and the terror could easily cause someone to overestimate. But, let’s say fired half, say 75 to 100 rounds. That is 3 to 4 rounds per fatality…not exactly a sharpshooter, assuming it actually took that many rounds to kill the victims and he wasn’t just shooting them multiple times for sport. Once he killed the teacher, he had no one to challenge him. All he would have to do is stand at the door and kill the children one at a time. As for reloads? Handguns are very easy to manipulate (particularly a Glock and a Sig Sauer). 7 year old children aren’t going to rush him while he is reloading, so he could have taken his sweet time and then resumed the killing. Once all the children in the class were down and he had no other potential targets in front of him, I am willing to bet that he ended it right there; long before any law enforcement showed up.

      • So between Dick Kizinya a few lines up and Pete Harris above, I see the Facebook crowd has arrived in our little enclave.

        Way to raise the tone of the discussion there, boys.

    • And here I was hoping statistics would be posted, with theories and conclusions. Oh well, was I asking for to much??

    • We need them to protect us from big, nasty, angry dudes like you. I mean, what else would you do to us if you could and we did not have a means to protect ourselves?

  10. Scrap the previous stories, NOW the media is blaming the deadly “assault rifle” for every casualty, oh boy, now its gonna get rough. LATEST STORY:

    Names of victims released; rifle was primary weapon
    Posted: Friday, December 14, 2012 8:29 PM EST Updated: Saturday, December 15, 2012 5:16 PM EST
    By RNN Staff – email

    NEWTOWN, CT (RNN) – The Connecticut state medical examiner revealed that the suspect in the shooting deaths of 26 people at an elementary school used the most powerful weapon at his disposal.

    The .223 Bushmaster rifle, once thought to be recovered in the suspect’s car, was the main weapon in the fatal shootings.

    All the victims died as a result of gunshot wounds from the rifle, and all the students were in the first grade.

    Chief Medical Examiner H. Wayne Carver II said during a news conference that all victims appeared to have multiple wounds, and the majority of them were likely not shot at close range.

    “This type of weapon, the bullets were designed in such a fashion that the energy is deposited in the tissue, and so the bullet stays in,” Carver said. “This is a very devastating set of injuries.”

    Carver’s office has completed autopsies on all 20 children killed and six adults – all of them women – but has yet to complete examinations of the bodies of two adults, the shooter and his mother. The remaining autopsies are expected to be completed Sunday.

    Families were shown pictures of the victims instead of viewing them personally because of the severity of the injuries.

    A team of four doctors, 10 technicians and one student who was beginning her first day on the job worked on autopsies of the bodies.

    Carver, who has been a medical examiner for 31 years, said this was the worst case he has personally worked on or heard of from his colleagues.

    • “This type of weapon, the bullets were designed in such a fashion that the energy is deposited in the tissue, and so the bullet stays in,” Carver said.

      As opposed to every other kind of bullet? Oh, wait.

      • Actually the .223/5.56 round tends to pass right thru human flesh, but no point in quibbling with the coroner in light of how horrible this situation is.

        Expect Obama to jump on this and ban this type of carbine and its magazines within weeks. He will righteously claim govt must “do something” and probably pass and Executive Order with little or no opposition from the GOP or NRA.

  12. And yet there are people in the pro-gun community who are opposed to any waiting period or background checks. I think these are reasonable “bare minimum” restrictions and are much better than draconian AWBs that the grabbers want.

  14. In the mind of liberals, the perfect law can be crafted that would have retroactively prevented Lanza from purchasing weapons, stealing weapons, taking the weapons into a school, killing as many children as he did.

  15. 1 – This is about the children. I am appalled.
    2 – Hmmmmmm is right. Obviously. Thanks for standing up for children.
    3 – You don’t need high powered rifles to hunt, or protect your family. A shotgun works just fine. Originalism doesn’t work for you, either – this technology just didn’t exist and wasn’t even contemplated (maybe by Ben Franklin, but he was a genius).

    • Emily: Welcome to the site. I can tell you’re new here.

      1 – This is about the children. I am appalled.

      I’m sorry you’re appalled, but it’s not about the children. Not here. What happened was a crying shame, and anyone here who could have stopped it or taken it back would do so, but that’s not our focus. This site is not The Truth About Children (RF, new site idea! After all, you’ve got a couple!), it’s The Truth About Guns, and our focus is the laws, regulations, and infringements that the anti-gun crowd will try to foist on us by using this tragedy. Laws, regulations, and infringements that, like the ones already in place, would do nothing to stop this event, but simply make people feel good. Until they don’t work. And they call for more regulations.

      2 – Hmmmmmm is right. Obviously. Thanks for standing up for children.

      “Obviously.” I don’t see anything obvious about it. Perhaps you could enlighten me?

      3 – You don’t need high powered rifles to hunt, or protect your family. A shotgun works just fine.

      Spoken like someone who has no actual experience with what they’re talking about. Please restrict your broad generalizations to Facebook.

      Originalism doesn’t work for you, either – this technology just didn’t exist and wasn’t even contemplated (maybe by Ben Franklin, but he was a genius).

      Uh huh. Curious how your ability — Sweet Baby Jesus, I hate this argument, but hating it doesn’t make it less true — Curious how your ability to express your opinions here is still protected by the First Amendment, even though I’m reading them using glowing phosphors of light that are generated from a signal that was TRANSMITTED INVISIBLY THROUGH THE AIR (Holy shit technology is awesome!), instead of reading it on a broadsheet printed one-at-a-time on a Gutenberg press. Similarly, your private communications are still protected from Unreasonable Search and Seizure by the Fourth Amendment — as of this writing anyway, as the government seems to be doing everything they can to evade this one, but that’s a discussion for another time — despite the fact that many if most of them now take place via email, text and other electronic means that also didn’t exist nor were contemplated when the document was written. That’s the beauty of the document. By writing it the way they did, the founding fathers managed to come up with a set of rules that was not tied simply to the times that they lived in, but would live on and continue to apply long past the (to them) foreseeable future.

      • 3 – You don’t need high powered rifles to hunt, or protect your family. A shotgun works just fine.

        Let’s be fair, Matt. We all know this would be a panacea because while high powered rifles (shooting cartridges initially developed for varminting) dispense death freely, shotguns are the cuddly bunnies of the firearms world.

  17. Firearms cause mass shootings, in the same way that passenger aircraft caused 9/11.

    I missed the political hacks calling for an airplane ban.

  18. I don’t understand people who say that if you make a law banning these assault rifles, it will only make the problem worse because it will create a black market for them. I can see that it will create a black market for a few criminals to get such weapons, but being that most gun owners are law abiding citizens, they would not buy them. It is just like sawed off shotguns and fully automatic assault rifles.

    These weapons are against the law to own yet can still be obtained illegally. How often are they being used by one of these mass killers? They are not. The weapon of choice for these people are semi-auto assault rifles, weapons in which not one person can point a verifiable instance of any good happening from a civilian owning one.

    The fact is, these slayings are not being committed by “criminals” they are being committed by people who would have little or no trouble buying such weapons legally, but in order to get them faster choose to steal them off others. The NRA s solution is to put armed guards at schools and to not address the real problem. Given its history , this should come as no surprise.

    If someone invented a nuclear gun tomorrow, they would be screaming it is the right of every civilian to own one. Understand that they are they gun manufacturers lobbyists. Say you were to put a guard armed with a 9mm sidearm and a kevlar vest at every school. A trained guard such equipped might stop an Adam Lanza, but if he were to meet up with someone with an assault rifle and military training , who are taught where to shoot people with kevlar protection, we would just have to add that guards name to the list of dead.

    The NRA might have shown that they considered this a serious problem if they had suggested guards at schools and a ban on such weapons. The stockholders of the gun companies the NRA protects do not care about 5year olds getting slaughtered at school. Neither does the NRA.

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