Adam Lanza (courtesy murderpedia.org)

“I remember giving creative writing assignments to students instructing them to write a page or two on whatever they wanted to talk about. Adam would write ten pages, obsessing about battles, destruction and war. In my years of experience, I have known (redacted) grade boys to talk about things like this, but Adam’s level of violence was disturbing. I remember showing the writings to the Principal at the time. Adam’s creative writing was so graphic that it could not be shared.” – Adam Lanza’s teacher [Click here to read the recently released “full” report on the Newtown massacre.]

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112 COMMENTS

      • I won’t dispute your sentiment about the mother but do you really think this kid would have been as messed up as he was if he had a (strong, capable) father in the house?

        Not a chance.

        • You may be absolutely correct, but “we” as a society do not want to discuss this because “we” would rather just not worry ourselves about the real-life consequences of broken homes.

      • Are you proposing to euthanase all young men with mental problems? Hitler did that, in your mind you keep disturbing company, funny thing though, even Hitler came up short on killing their mother`s too.

        • The comment is obviously a retrospective on a young man who murdered many defenseless very young children. It may surprise you, but this brings out individual hate for the former Adam Lanza.

      • The most recently released investigation details include mail from the father asking Adam if he wanted “to go hiking or shooting.” Dad new the facts. I suspect Nancy had something to lose financially if she was no longer Adam’s caregiver.

  2. Demonstrating once again that America has a broken system for dealing with mental illness. Whether we like to admit it or not, there are some people who do in fact need to be forcibly removed from society and locked away in mental health institutions either forever or until they actually are better.

    Seems like Adam, tragically, became the punchline of an old joke about the weather:

    “Everyone is talking about it, but nobody is doing anything about it.”

    • Crazy kid does crazy thing. Literally no one that knew said crazy kid is surprised.

      When’s the last time there was a spree killing and anyone interviewed said “Geez he was just so normal and well adjusted with a hot girlfriend!” It’s ALWAYS the same story. Social outcast. Obsessed with violence. CRAZY.

      Limit magazine capacity.

      • NDS,

        Limiting magazine capacity will accomplish nothing. Sheriff Ken Campbell of Boone County, Indiana, illustrates this fact in this video:
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YmF2ULnlhA
        Just to whet your appetite, he demonstrates how a person can crank off 30 shots in less than 19 seconds with revolvers … and the person pulling the trigger has minimal training/practice.

        There will always be crazy people who attack others. There never has been nor will there ever be a “system” that catches all of them before they act. The simple, inexpensive, and pragmatic solution is to have lots of responsible armed citizens everywhere that can stop a crazy spree killer within seconds.

        Think about it. How many adult staff and visitors are in a typical elementary school at any given moment … at least 20? If one in five adults are armed then there should be at least four armed adults in a typical elementary school at any given moment. Four armed adults in a school will do a hell of lot more to limit a spree killer than magazine capacity restrictions which do nothing anyway.

        • Not to mention the fact that there are by some estimates as many as 1 billion standard capacity magazines floating around the US…talk about the genie being out of the bottle!

        • Come on now, you have to know I was being sarcastic about mag limits, when clearly it is the crazy person not the tool. A kid could just as easily hack up a bunch of kindergarteners with an axe as a carbine.

          Also, school choice matters. My kids go to a school where parents are encouraged (unofficially) to carry at all events, field trips, etc. I know many staff members are CCW holders and can only assume they exercise their right in the classroom.

        • I understood it as sarcasm right away. But then again, if sarcasm was a weapon, I’d be operator as ****.

      • Limit magazine capacity. That is about the most idiotic thing someone could say and a true kick in the balls to the victims of creeps that would shoot up a school. Are you lacking intelligence or are you just that callous that you don’t give a shit?

        • Sarcasm, see above.

          Why would I comment about crazy people doing crazy things, and then recommend firearm related legislation?

          Oh wait, because that’s exactly what happened. Instead of maybe “doing something” about the actual problem. For the children.

        • NDS, sorry I missed the sarcasm. In this day and age, nothing would surprise me thus my response. No worries.

          Hannibal, KMA.

      • Yet, for every one fitting that profile, there are maybe a million other who do, but who don’t commit any violence, who don’t desire to hurt anyone, and who live out their pathetic lives in peace. You would entrust the government to sift through people’s private medical records and personal lives and determine whom to send off to the mental wards, the re-education camps, the salt mines, or wherever, for the public’s safety. That sounds crazy to me.

  3. A year of “intense ” government study. Countless dollars. Experts galore no doubt. The ones with all the letters after their name and licenses. Conclusion? No different than mine on the day after. Technically speaking, he was bat shit crazy.

  4. It took them 3 months to pass new, useless, convoluted and pointless gun laws but over 1 year later while the evidence is clear we have ZERO laws or even suggestions to reforms to the mental health system in CT. While it is clear we had a bad actor and crappy system, we choose to instead focus on guns — the laws have done and will do nothing except to promote an agenda

    • Not entirely true, there were mental health components to the new gun laws. A remaining issue is that CT does not have the ability to involuntarily commit people to mental institutions, unlike most states. No argument that something like that needs to have a very narrow scope, but if an individual has demonstrated severe enough behavior, and refuses other forms of treatment, there has to be an option to remove them from a situation where they can cause harm to themselves or others. Had THAT kind of law been in place, it really is possible that Newtown could have been avoided.

      • “A remaining issue is that CT does not have the ability to involuntarily commit people to mental institutions, unlike most states.”

        No doubt this comment will be missed in this discussion, as usual, and the thread will simply devolve into one long string of stupid remarks about the kid himself, or gun bans, etc.

        But…this is the point!!

        • The mental health issue is not simple. While Connecticut has restrictions on involuntary commitment, the newest release of investigation material by the CT State Police makes this clear: After diagnostic visits to the Yale Mental Health facility, it was Nancy who refused to have Adam take anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications recommended for Adam.

          Out-patient care can be extremely effective if the depressed or psychotic person has available full- or nearly-full-time family support to make sure meds are taken, and to provide conversation and outside activity. Nancy refused the idea of medication. Rather than provide conversation and healthy activity, she condoned Adam’s three months in the basement and nothing but email conversation. (Condonement in the legal sense.) Adam wasn’t melting down. It appears he had already melted down and Nancy had became paralyzed with indecision. How she failed to get weapons out of the house or get them securely locked up is beyond me. She had a very dysfunctional young man in the house. She knew his fascination with violence, as the report makes clear.

          There must be more to Nancy’s reluctance than bad judgement. Perhaps some detail of the divorce settlement provided an incentive not to seek in-patient care for Adam aggressively?

    • How long did it take to pass the “Patriot” Act?

      This is how our esteemed representatives act, Like scared little boys trying to puff up their chests.

    • Check out a left-wing message board sometime on the subject of gun enthusiasts…they think we are literally (not figuratively) insane. and want the State to intervene.

      For our own good, of course.

      • I guess all that time fondling your Glock caused you to forget what happens when the government imposes laws like this. Once they start throwing the book at people with mental illnesses, it will only take a few years for anyone who owns or wants to own a gun to suddenly fit the template for “mentally ill.”

        Don’t kid yourself, fanboy. They don’t pass “public safety” laws to keep you safe; they pass them to solidify their power.

    • What really bothered me was a description of a picture of the home and how MSN used it to portray all gun owners as “Adam.” It pretty much stated that a picture in the report showed gun magazines, ammo, used targets, gun cases, earplugs, and a gun safe with a rifle in it. They put this in the first sentence of the new report. Wonder if we can sue them for defamation of character. Anyone know about this?

  7. We NOW know he was crazy. But, he is protected by the 2A to have a firearm. So, does his writing suggest he was mentally ill or could that tell what he was going to do in the future and allowed to have access to guns? Is his writing any different than any violent/gore film? Should his anti-social behavior not have allowed him to own a gun? Was he taking certain drugs and should those pills put him on a list not allowed to own a gun? Should his mental illness have put him on a list that stated no guns or access to them? Or should there be an armed resource officer at every school to protect the kids?

    • “Or should there be an armed resource officer at every school to protect the kids?”

      No. There should be responsible armed staff, parents, and volunteers at every school to protect the children.

      • This.

        The same mentality that so many parents have, the school (government) will raise, educate, and discipline my child carries over to their defense as well.

        Assuming some armed resource officer is enough to stop a determined attacker is a much larger gamble then having various teachers, administrators, parents and custodial staff carrying their personal weapons.

        Who’s going to fight harder, a parent protecting their own child or a police officer that wants to get home to his own family that day?

      • Adam had his own gun. Further, according to the latest released material, his father had sent him a gift check for the money needed to buy another gun.

        This was one dysfunctional isolated guy. His signs of mental dysfunction were repeated for years. His fascination with violence had become clear to teachers and parents more than ten years previous to the incident. He had spent three months in the basement, according to the latest releases, and communicated with his mother only by email, from the basement.

        And yet he had guns? And a check to buy another? And his mother did essentially nothing to get effective help? I agree the emphasis on photos of the guns is mere pandering to the anti-gun people. I think the focus should be on the remarkable do-nothing failure to pull Adam out of his complete isolation. Inevitably people will say, “yes, and the least she could have done is get guns securely out of his reach.”

    • I firmly believe that the solution (imperfect as it is, since it requires waiting for the nut-job to make the first offensive move) is to have armed responders inside the school/gun free zone to stop the violence at the earliest possible moment.

      I have some concern over the focus on “School Resource Officers”, however. 1) It seems to admit that the Second Amendment does not apply in regards to non-government civilians, and 2) It furthers the concept that only the government can/should provide the armed protection required.

      Both of these are very dangerous assumptions on a level with allowing pre-crime profiling for mental issues and agreeing to allow a government agency to infringe on our natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms by determining what criteria puts you in a database of persons who are no longer “allowed” to exercise their 2A rights. Once such a list is created and an agency tasked with maintaining and enforcing it, who is to say that by simply opposing such a list you do not become a person required to be included on the list?

      People, free citizens, have a right to be crazy. Most geniuses and inventors were considered by the establishment of their day to be insane whack jobs. Even Einstein had his detractors. Just look at the professional opposition to the concept of germs and bacteria in the 19th century. What free but crazy citizens do not have a right to is to intentionally harm other people and if and when they do then those non-crazy citizens need to be able to protect themselves and their neighbors. That’s what the 2A is all about.

  8. The report also indicated that Lanza had never threatened anyone or acted violently in the past. I recently read a piece by Ann Coulter calling for the forced institutionalization of crazy people. This sounds like a reasonable response, but who decides what constitutes “crazy”?

    You believe in an invisible omnipotent man in the sky who controls the universe? Crazy. PTSD? Crazy. Take antidepressants? Crazy. And no guns for crazy people, right? Have an ex with a bone to pick? “Hi, my ex is really unstable. You better send a car to pick him up. Oh, and he has a bunch of guns.”

    Mass shootings are incredibly disturbing and incredibly rare. The answer is not to ask the government to force people into institutions. Look at who’s making our laws right now. You want them to grant themselves this kind of authority? We will find ourselves on a speedng bullet train to Stalinism.

    • ^ This !!!!!!

      People: stop looking to government to solve all of our problems. Solve them yourselves.

      I go out in public armed with a large caliber handgun and spare magazines. I practice. I can shoot 11 inch by 18 inch targets while moving sideways to said targets at ranges of 20 feet. I can shoot stationary 11 inch by 18 inch targets out to 50 yards. Keep in mind that I am nothing more than an average citizen. I have no S.W.A.T. training. I have no Special Forces training.

      It boils down to this: if a crazy spree killer starts shooting anywhere near me, he/she is going down quickly. It doesn’t matter what our mental health system has or has not done. It doesn’t matter if someone nearby has a cell phone. It doesn’t matter if the 911 dispatcher gets the wrong address. It doesn’t matter if a police cruiser is close or far away. It doesn’t matter if the first police officer arriving on scene waits for backup or charges in.

      Stated in simple English: be armed and proficient yourself and it doesn’t matter what government does or fails to do.

      • “Stated in simple English: be armed and proficient yourself and it doesn’t matter what government does or fails to do.”

        By the way this makes government largely irrelevant which is why government wants so badly to disarm us!!!

        • Where did he say that?? He specifically said if someone starts shooting. I assume your solution would either be lock up everyone with mental health issues despite practically none of them being a danger or to disarm everyone making everyone an easy target for those who either chose to ignore the law or use other means to accomplish the same end.

        • But his problem is he seems to see no difference between “locking EVERYONE up” and making it possible to lock crazies up. Sure, care has to be taken with due process because the government can’t be trusted completely- but we let them lock criminals up? Maybe there should be a ‘jury’ empaneled for oversight of commitments…

    • His mother knew there was a big problem, his teachers knew there was a big problem, everybody knew this kid had a huge problem, and they did nothing. Certainly mental health laws need to be very carefully considered and have a narrow scope, but the fact remains that his mother bears a lot of the responsibility for this tragedy, and she paid the price for that mistake with her life. The advisory committee found (summary here: http://articles.courant.com/2013-12-28/news/hc-lanza-sandy-hook-report1228-20131227_1_peter-lanza-adam-lanza-nancy-lanza ) that he did see psychiatric help, and concerns were raised about his instability and increasing isolation and stress. Despite this, she took him off his medications on her own, and was described as “non-compliant” by a Yale psychiatrist. This kid was a ticking time bomb and the one person who had the power to do anything, didn’t. At that point, there has to be some mechanism to remove a person from a toxic situation.

      • Calling him a time bomb implies that the many others in nearly identical states are too. This despite evidence to the contrary in that there are not thousands of such events every year. If your solution is to attempt to pick out the shooters before they make that turn the result WILL be the victimization of many many innocent if disturbed people.

      • I get the feeling (yeah, I know, but I’m too lazy to look for evidence) that Lanza’s mom was nuts too.

    • It is actually some of the most pro-2nd-Am people on this site who advocate hospitalization. “Don’t lump us in with the crazy people.” I understand this. I also think the fears of hospitalization as political punishment are legitimate. What I do not accept is the widespread opposition to forced medication for people who have a history of delusion-producing illness, psychosis, or schizophrenia. It is possible to set up an effective hearing process with representation, with a right to repeat hearings. The question is not just one of gun safety. The toll that non-medicated seriously mentally ill people take on their own families is enormous. When involuntary hospitalization is out, we need to create a reasonable fair regimen insuring compliance (and med provision) for those that will remain in community or at home.

    • Forced institutionalization is an awful idea for two reasons. It has tended historically to be abused, and also leads to enormous tax-payer expense. Check out NY State’s system for a typical example.

      The problem in the US, both in its laws and activist sentiments, is the inability to require people with delusional illness to take medication, so that community or family care becomes practical and safe, both for the ill person and others. Anyone who thinks allowing people with serious psychosis or shizophrenia to go without meds is doing the ill person a favor simply hasn’t spent time with such a person when they are unmedicated.

      • “Forced institutionalization is an awful idea for two reasons.”

        Here’s a third reason: No SANE person wants to work in such a place day after day, and no sane person who finds themselves in that position can remain sane for very long. Warehousing and drugging insane people, considering there is NO effective cure for their problems, is an extremely frustrating endeavor. This explains the eventual barbarity of physically damaging their brains through electro-shock therapy or lobotomy.

        • Cliff, I sincerely hope you never have to spend a substantial amount of time with a schizophrenic off their meds. I don’t think you could take it.

        • I agree that in-patient long-term institutional staff become callous, cruel. I also went through, long ago, the emergency effort of having to put (with pre-authorization) 5 mg of Haldol into a person’s juice surreptitiously, as they were going ballistic. They got on their meds, eventually. They moved on. They have a life. They are still alive. So is everybody else around them. And all that thanks to a stand-up shrink.

          For delusional psychotics meds are not a maybe. They shouldn’t be optional. They don’t require in-patient warehousing if the person has a real friend or family. But, the force of the law must be there to require taking the medication. Otherwise people will just walk away and warehousing becomes the only (bad) solution. This isn’t theory. This is known.

  9. I’m a bit reluctant to go and use some kid’s writing as evidence he has a problem. There are way too many teachers that would go and send every kid who writes about violence to the shrink. We clearly need to get unstable people to go find help, but we also don’t want to start a witch-hunt.

    • There was plenty more evidence beyond this, and he saw several psychiatric professionals. See my post just above for a link.

      • Dealt with how? Would you deal with the countless kids who display similar behavior but never commit such crimes the same way?

        • “countless kids who display similar behavior”

          Oh, really?

          You don’t know many details about Lanza’s history of severe manifestation of deep psychosis, do you? And, you don’t know much about the nature of violent mental illness either, do you? And therefore, please document these “countless” examples of kids like Lanza?

          In other words, you don’t know what you are talking about.

        • PM, I think they’re just saying “the kid may be a budding Stephen King. Without more, a bit of writing isn’t a sign of illness. It is a sign of ideation, and we’d better make sure that it isn’t just a sign of creativity in a popular genre. Obsessively training for combat-style shooting may well be a sign, if you get my drift, if that is one’s only activity.

          The writing was the least of Adam’s outward emotional dysfunction signs. No friends and no activities is a sign. Not being able to tolerate a hug from one’s own mother might be a sign, eh? Staying in one’s basement room for three months communicating with people in the same house only by email, refusing conversation just possibly might be a sign. We don’t need to blow up the writing issue. The isolation facts, the abnormal reactions to family affection, many other bits, are clues enough.

      • How’s it silly? I get that there were other indicators, but just some violent writing shouldn’t be the one we focus on. Do you really think that we should stigmatize and censor those who write violent stories. Zero tolerance is already messing up our kids, especially our young boys. The last thing we need is to make teachers feel justified in stifling them.

        I’m not trying to say that we don’t need some serious mental health reforms, but crafting mental health policy that only revolves a desire to prevent mass shooting is a recipe for disaster. There are tons of people with mental issues that aren’t violent and treating every person who seeks help as a potential mass-murderer is just going to discourage people from getting the help they need.

      • I used to think wisdom was automatically granted with age. Thank you, Paul T. McCain, for proving me wrong.

  10. If the content of the report is true, and I have made it clear that I do not trust the CT authorities on this matter in the past, but IF the report is true then his father needs to explain why he thought it was acceptable to only communicate with his son through E-mails while he kept himself locked away for a period of years.

    His mother allowed this to happen and it seems like the guns were just a pathetic attempt to make an impotent, mentally ill creature feel like he had some capacity to affect change on the world him. That is a dangerous thing when you don’t even go outside. The world around you would seem alien and hostile.

    Really though, it doesn’t add up. His father and brother both worked for Ernst and Young, which is a prominent accounting firm. His mother was also fabulously wealthy. In order to believe this official narrative we have to believe that the Lanza’s were the most eccentric band of idiots in the United States, hiding in plain sight among the hoity-toity of Fairfield County. I don’t.

    I also don’t understand why they took pictures of him with guns when he was a baby. Neither one of the parents were in the military as far as I know, that particular image seems loaded and out of place. It is almost like they were trying too hard, but if it is a real photo of Adam Lanza then I want to know whose guns those are… What remains of this family owes America an explanation.

    • To NOT believe this report is to think that there is a magical coverup that somehow got everyone who knew the loser to falsely say he was, to paraphrase, crazy.

      Adjust your tinfoil.

      • How many people actually knew him? There is precious little information about him as a boy, or at all. I would like to see more. I mean, I have looked man and there is nothing… Show me an example that is more than a few words from a practically anonymous person.

        What we have seen is extremely vague, surely you can see the gaping holes in the story? Any reasonable person could, they’re painfully obvious if you actually look. To believe the official story you have to literally shut down your brain… and it is all being used to fervently push disarmament.

        Maybe you should consider that CT authorities are completely and totally corrupt? That they would go so far as to stage a false event or warp information about a real one to give their pet cause traction? Why is this out of the question for so many? When did everyone start trusting the government so much? I don’t care who thinks I’m crazy, the whole story reeks.

    • Fug, I think the father works for GE Finance. The mother wasn’t independently wealthy, but depended on the generous divorce settlement.

  11. The problem is that not every kid that does that kind of thing (writes English composition saying how he’d like to cut off his teacher’s head and feed it to the alligators) goes on to be an Adam L. A good friend of ours taught 9th grade English in the local HS and had a few of those types. As far as I know they didn’t commit mass murders anywhere. (although I guess they could have turned into spouse/child abusers later in life….) That’s the problem with predicting behavior. And we DEFINITELY don’t want our gubment “masters” practicing it.

  12. I read the final report on the Sandy Hook shooting, every word. Nothing surprising in it, but one item of note, I thought. Adam Lanza had a video game called ‘School Shooting’ where the player controls a character that enters a school and shoots at students. Now, I understand games like Call of Duty and other similar titles, but what sick people came up with the idea for that game? I’m not for an Orwellian type Government control society, I’m all for freedom, but how about a little parental oversight?

    • Proper oversight could have prevented this from happening the way it did at any point down the road. If the mother’s guns had been inaccessible, if he had not had a gun (even a .22!), if he had been monitored more closely, if if if.

      • His first act that day was to murder his mothermother while she slept. If she had kept the gun safe combination secret or hidden the key, do you really think he’d be adverse to torturing that out of her? It would have amounted to a speed bump in his plans.

  13. We were willing and saw it necessary to give the lives of 185,000 Americans to keep our freedom from the threat of one madman and to free Europe of his tranical grip.

    A madman/child takes the lives of 20 children, the mechanics of which, his faulty wireing of his brain, are more akin to a ruptured brake line on a bus that goes off a mountain road.
    And yet this one madman, Adam Lanza, has us as a nation, volunteering to give up our freedoms and the tools required to maintain it.
    As we should, we should try to prevent bus crashes and spree killers, but we must also prevent any tyrant from the ability to kill 20 million children.
    Short term/long term, put it on the scale, which way do you think it should tip?

  14. Here’s the problem: for every mentally ill person who picks up a gun and goes on a killing spree, there are about 1 million mentally ill people who don’t (estimates of up to 10% of population have or will have some degree of mental illness in their lifetime, and up to 30 spree killings/year).

    “Lock the crazy people up!” is nothing more than a witch hunt. It as poorly reasoned a response as magazine limits and gun registration. Ask any group of mental health professionals what “mental illness” is and you will get at least one, different definition for every member of the group. This is not chemistry. You cannot watch a color change and go, “a hah!” The only thing you would ever get a group of mental health professionals to agree on is that it is impossible to accurately predict which person with a non-violent past will act out violently in the future.

    This is AMERICA for heaven’s sake! We do NOT lock people up based upon what they might do. We punish transgressions when they occur, not before hand. Stalin did the opposite. “Lock the crazy people up!” Yeah, let’s see… Current prison population is just over 2 million. Current number of people suffering some form of mental illness is 30 million. Beyond the fact it would bankrupt the country, destroy the economy, and end for all time any concept of civil rights, it is simply wrong.

    Yes, treatment for mental illness needs to be improved. Yes, diagnosis needs to be improved. Yes, there are many gaps that need to be filled. But come one, people, don’t turn this into a witch hunt. Less than 60 years ago, being gay was being mentally ill. Refusing to comply with Jim Crow authority if you were a black man made you “crazy”. Depressed because of the death of a loved one? Mentally ill. Worry too much about money? Mentally ill. Suppressed anger because of childhood abuse? Mentally ill.

    Acute mental illness is extremely rare, and sometimes leads to public mass shootings. But the other things that count as mental illness such as depression have also been factors in public mass shootings. So you want to lock up anyone who ever lost a partner or child and had trouble coping with the loss?

    There is a simple two step way to mitigate the risks posed by the very, very few mentally ill people who go off the deep end: 1) improve diagnosis and treatment for them, 2) implement dramatically improved security around the things our society treasures, or rather add our children to the list of things we protect through force of arms.

  15. Eh. I wrote some pretty grim stuff when I was a kid, and I turned out to be a guy who removes spiders from the tub and sets them free instead of stomping them. VIvid writing could have been an indication he was going to become the next Tarantino or Spielberg instead of a deranged killer. You’d hate to see administrators yanking kids from school based solely on wild imaginations. It feels like one group or another is going to get their rights stomped out of this. Damn you, Lanza.

    • I would really like to hear from his father and brother. I feel like they are obligated as men to explain what went on in that house. As it stands many aspects of the story just don’t make sense and it is hard to swallow what the state of Connecticut is shoveling.

  16. I guarantee you the day the government sets “mental health standards” half of the people on this website will end up on the sh!t list.

    As much as I don’t like crazy people with guns, I don’t want to risk everyone else’s right for a small theoretical increase in security.

    We went ape sh!t crazy over 9/11 and created the monstrosity that is the TSA – never mind the massive over-reaches that are happening over at NSA.

    The last thing I want is another excuse for government to set an arbitrary standard to protect us from things that are statistically insignificant.

    You are far more likely to die in an auto accident than by terrorism or a crazy person. I’ll take my chances with the low risk of crazy over the huge risk of government abuse.

    • “We went ape sh!t crazy over 9/11 and created the monstrosity that is the TSA…”
      You’re forgetting the paranoid dysfunctional gorilla in the corner – DHS. They’re comparably armed with the Armed forces. TSA is just a small particle in their empire.

  17. Sad story. Kid was obviously troubled but the Mother was unable to help. Yet she took him shooting and failed to secure weapons safely, for which she paid the price.
    I’m with another poster- while I have deep sympathy for the Father, I also hold him responsible for being too out-of-touch.

  18. There were signs.

    Adam Lanza was an adult. But he was living with his mother, Nancy Lanza, in an upscale Connecticut neighborhood, with plenty of time to play violent video games, day in and day out. Adam Lanza had a computer, internet access, room and board. He had as much as any comfortable family could give any child, though he was a child no more.

    Nancy Lanza noticed her son’s fascination with violence, troubling indications, but she didn’t make an essential connection: her son was violent.

    Instead she sought to bond with her son, whom she described within weeks of her death as “disconnected.” In the months before Sandy Hook, Nancy Lanza had begun the complicated legal process of seeking conservatorship over her son. Assuming full, legal responsibility for another human being is no small matter. Adam Lanza was apparently aware of his mother’s intent.

    It has been reported that Adam Lanza feared being institutionalized by his mother, that December 14th was the essential moment when he decided that he would not permit that to happen. Adam Lanza harbored this idea, this fear of losing control of his life, and rebelled against it in the most horrific manner possible. When Adam Lanza said “No,” we all heard him.

    Nancy Lanza told a friend that her son had taken to burning himself with a lighter on his wrists and ankles, “as though he were trying to feel something.”

    So there were signs.

    Nancy Lanza took her son to gun ranges, introducing him to real firearms that were tantalizingingly similar to the ever-more-realistic weapons of Halo, World of Warcraft, Team Fortress2. Did video games make the man? Lt. Col. Dave Grossman has made persuasive arguments that video games inculcate children into a mindset that potentiates murder. Perhaps. What we do know is that, until recently, the world had no use for a sentence describing a “man” “playing” “video games.” And until December 14, 2012, matricide was virtually unknown and murdering nearly two dozen kindergarteners unthinkable.

    FBI investigator Robert Paquette said, “Many of these games are very, very violent. I can’t help but believe these can affect the minds of someone unbalanced.” That sounds about right: normal human beings with normal skills, judgment and cognitive abilities can enjoy make-believe mayhem. But that was not Adam Lanza.

    Adam Lanza was not well, and everyone knew it. There were signs.

    After the fact, after knowing what Adam Lanza would do, we get to examine the judgment of his caretaker. Was it wise for Nancy Lanza to allow her son to while away his days playing violent video games? Probably not. Was it sensible to seek a bonding, mother-son connection that extended such violence, re-purposing it to real firearms? No. Was it prudent for Nancy Lanza to permit unsupervised access to her arsenal by her deranged son? Absolutely not.

    Adam Lanza was smart — smart enough to plan, smart enough to destroy the hard-drive of his computer, smart enough to compete in his educational pursuits. He was smart. But smart does not mean balanced. Smart does not mean “good judgment.” Smart does not mean that the child — whom you know is failing — should have had his appetites satisfied. Because the appetites of the insane should not be fed.

    A big, gaping hole has been blown into more than two dozen families’ lives that will never be repaired.

    There were signs. They were ignored.

    • I’m afraid that while the esteemed Lt. Col is not full of crap entirely, is at least greatly overhyped in the gun\LEO community, which needs to stop treating his theories as if they came down from on high. He wrote a couple of books with some very interesting history and case studies with some good metaphors, but goes completely off the rails when he starts to try and conclude things for which he has no training or evidence beyond assumptions and unfamiliarity (violence in culture, for example). Consider that youth violence has gone down with the increase of video games, and the overwhelming percentage of youth that play these games without killing a bunch of people.

      If there is any causation between violence in the media and school shootings, it would have to be the infamy the shooters receive. Their name all over the cable news. Half the people trying to ‘figure out’ why they snapped, some people using them for political ends, and a few nuts trying to exculpate them by weaving ridiculous conspiracy theories. Hey, kids, feeling alone and dejected? Kill a bunch of people and your face will be all over CNN and web blogs about guns!

      “And until December 14, 2012, matricide was virtually unknown” – [Not only is it not unknown (virtually or otherwise), but there’s a damn word for it for a reason! Matricide is no more or less unknown today than it was decades ago, or centuries ago if you read your ancient history. Deviant, to be sure, but so is murder.

      • The point of my comment is to note the various facts and common hypotheses about their etiology and Adam Lanza’s purported motivations while concluding from them the most significant and lasting reality: Everybody knew Adam Lanza was not well and required medical intervention.

        The State of Connecticut defeated AOT legislation six months before Sandy Hook (with an assist from the ACLU — thanks, guys!), thwarting Nancy Lanza’s attempts to institutionalize her son. Nor could any other authority protect society from Lanza because the law did not exist to allow it.

        In the end, Nancy Lanza committed an elaborate suicide that took 25 innocents with her.

        There were signs. They were ignored.

      • I agree, Hannibal. Apart from the video games everyone who came in contact with Adam knew, frankly, that he was nuts. Not stupid. Nuts. But no one wanted to take responsibility, act to get him either to safety (for him, for us) or get him on meds.

        Grossman is silly about video games. What the violent games seem to be is a sort of high-tech Rorschach Test. Normal guys play for amusement, for a score, and move on to other activity. The loons find in the games a life they prefer.

        “My shrink was shocked by my interpretation of his ink-blots. I told him “hey, doc, you’re the one with the dirty pictures.’ “

    • Most people who play video games don’t go on to shoot up a school and there’s never been any decent statistical evidence to establish a causal relationship between video games and violence. Also, none of the games you listed have realistic depictions of violence; if you played any of these games for 15 seconds you would know that. I understand the desire to try and pin this whole mess on some specific cause, but making sweeping generalizations, while showing a clear ignorance of the very thing you are arguing against, is no different from what the gun-grabbers do.

      • See above: I am not convinced that Lt. Col. Grossman’s theories are definitive. I believe they may have been contributory, but no more.

        Sandy Hook was the convergence of one deranged man and negligently-stored firearms and incompetent parenting in a State whose laws carefully made it impossible to deal with the result of that volatile mix.

  19. Crazy people should be confined to a building where they can live out their fantasies and babble on ad nauseum about their lunatic ideas but are prevented by sane people from hurting anybody.

    Whoa. I just described the Senate.

    • The biggest difference being that the Senate does not receive medication regularly. Which I think may explain a lot…

      • If you’re saying bonded bourbon isn’t medicine, the Senate’s been woefully misinformed. Email them, so they don’t continue to think it will moderate their delusions. I think you’re onto something, actually, as no amount of the stuff helped Ted Kennedy.

    • The United States Senate is prevented by sane people from hurting anybody? I give you Obamacare, sir. Also Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac.

  20. You all do realize that this is going to go full tilt the other way. The demonization of boys and toy guns is already in full swing, and now if boys even talk about war, battles, or anything of any violent nature, they’re the next Adam Lanza (even though millions of boys do this every single day and grow up to be normal constructive members of society… doctors, firemen, construction workers, police, fathers, heroes). Rallying to target mental illness, as opposed to rallying to HELP those with mental illness get well, is going to bite everyone in the ass Nurse Ratched style.

    Star Wars is going to have to change it’s name to Star Debate.

    (The solution remains the same… good guys (and girls) with guns Constitutionally protected to carry EVERYWHERE to respond immediately to threats and protect themselves and their loved ones)

  21. Pretty simple answer. Make it clear to everyone that RIGHTS are RIGHTS….if you are worried about someone “questionable” using a right of access to weapons in a manner detrimental to yourself or others, take the time to exercise the same right as a means of defense, and possible deterrence. When someone complains about a “borderline” individual and expects their big daddy gov to take care of their safety, point out that “to serve and protect” is just a slogan, not a truism. They have the right to take care of themselves, or not.
    “Better that 100 guilty men should go free than one innocent man be wrongly imprisoned”…similar ideals should be in place concerning mental health. We all see the unconstitutional and otherwise just plain wrong laws on the books for feel good reasons, why jump to apply similar standards to mental health. You may not agree with the judgment of those empowered to write the standards.

  22. Adam Whatshisname was a closeted pedophile. He played the “Dance Dance Revolution” video game at the mall with ‘his kids’ until he was asked to stop attending due to the inappropriateness of him, a grown man, being there. The special little snowflake’s feelings was hurt, and he decided to kill ‘their’ children as revenge.

    Sandy Hook was a repeat of the school massacre carried out by that guy in Dunblane, Scotland. He too was found out. He too was denied access to the objects of his perversion. So he killed ‘their’ children. (Like Whatshisname that guy in Scotland also used hearing protectors. Strange.)

    Adam Whatshisname made sure to completely destroy the hard disk that contained his stash of child porn. He didn’t mind being remembered a mass murderer, but a pedophile pervert was to much.

    People with unhealthy obsessions. Got to keep an eye on them. And their guns.

  23. You people still believe this crap? No Adam Lanza.no such person. You people are helping the anti gunners…

  24. Though this guy was obviously deranged(Easy to say Now!) We must look a little deeper into the human physic than we may want and the initial impression might provide. Rarely are all the influences available even after the final release of legal findings. The human mind is just too complex for words though we keep trying.

    Notice the language used. Are we going to monitor such language on the Internet while playing a game? Casual conversation with ‘friends’ possibly overheard by others? How about the age old exclamation, “KILL THE UMPIRE!?” Well?

    My family is a victim of crime. I’m a decent human being but the flaws regarding the incident (Murder) were made public and those that had ‘knowledge’ of myself and my family had no mercy. Small snapshots do not tell the complete story. Be very careful of your comments regarding others….Someday you may have to answer for your false self serving judgments.

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