Some reports are suggesting that he had Asperger's syndrome, which would explain an apparently highly intelligent child having communication difficulties and appearing 'socially awkward', and also having 'tantrums' that go a very long way beyond what most parents have any experience of coping with (and that a brother couldn't manage). I have no personal experience of this, but I do know people with kids with this condition, and it they describe these episodes as being 'meltdowns' - it's not something that they can be talked out of, or just told off for, or told to snap out of, like a normal childhood tantrum (the kind of thing that all of us parents are used to dealing with at times). It's something else entirely, although I've never heard of it going as far as anything like this. It may be that there were other issues alongside that, of course, that created the conditions for this episode to become what it has. If he did indeed have this condition (and others), whatever the rights and wrongs of 'gun control' as such, I would have to question the wisdom of having guns in that particular home that he could have accessed. I'm no expert, but it does sound to be like a recipe for potential disaster - it seems to me to be a much greater risk than the risk of a life-threatening intruder situation or burglary in a quiet town. Someone with Asperger's really shouldn't be able to get anywhere near a gun when in a 'meltdown' situation, especially if they have other issues going on too. They are really not able to act at all rationally at that point, and not able to consider their actions in the way that others do, and they normally would. I only hope that the result of this incident isn't a general demonization of those with Asperger's, or indeed any form of Autism, or of their parents. It isn't 'evil', but an illness that has resulted in an evil act. This is a very, very sad situation for everyone involved, of course. It is something that should never of happened, but it is sounding more and more like the perpetrator of this hideous act shouldn't be seen as a 'bad' person intent on doing 'evil', but as a person with a mental condition that wasn't being effectively and safely managed. That mentally ill person is also dead, and, for all of the bad things he did, also a victim of what has gone so badly wrong.
This is something I considered upon learning of the shooter's medical condition too. I worried that as soon as the term autism got thrown into the debate, people and institutions around the country are going to start looking at kids with ASD(Autism Spectrum Disorder, which covers a huge field) in an entirely new and paranoid light. It's not so much that doing couldn't have positive aspects to it, but I'm more worried about kneejerk emotional reactions rather than logical objective ones. Very good points you brought up.
do you think school shootings are something new? it may be the treatment adam lanza got from kids in school that is the cause of the shooting
with him shooting his mother in the face then using her guns to kill kids at her school, Dr. Freud and i say it has more to do with her.
all the reports i've seen say she was a great mother and freud died in 1939, he is not saying anything
Yeah, well, maybe we should progress beyond Dr. Freud and get into the real world where any doctor and his brother could have prescribed medicine for nerves and there is no required follow up by those trained on nerves. It could have just been him, and the mother could have just been the one preventing him from having what he wanted, like a car...that is the condition of the multiple murderer that showed up on the front porch of a man after he killed my cousin for his car, after six years later having killed another six months after release when the three psychatrists said he would kill again, and he escaped to sit on that porch because they put Aquarius in minimum security. And Cyntia Tucker wants the law, which keeps Aquarius in the institution because he has to go before a judge instead of three murdering accomplice psychatrists, removed. Remember the two page spread where Cyntha Tucker argued for release of the resident genius of Angola, where she said it was racism because more than 600 murderers and multiple murderers had been released from Angola but not poor black Wilbert who shoved a knife into a woman's heart? We do not have all the facts yet.
Nancy Lanza legally owned a Sig Sauer and a Glock, both handguns of models commonly used by police, and a military-style Bushmaster .223 M4 carbine. Law enforcement officials believe Adam Lanza used at least some of those weapons. Nancy Lanza was an avid gun collector who once showed him a "really nice, high-end rifle" that she had purchased, said Dan Holmes, owner of a landscaping business who recently decorated her yard with Christmas garlands and lights. "She said she would often go target shooting with her kids." http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/15/us-connecticut-towns-idUSBRE8BD0U120121215
*He shattered glass next to locked-doors to get in* ~ State trooper spokesman http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/50208049/#50208049
Lanza reportedly tried to buy rifle, was denied NBC's Pete Williams reports that Connecticut school shooter Adam Lanza attempted to purchase a rifle earlier this week at a sporting goods store in Danbury, Conn. http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/50208495#50208495
A day before he killed 20 children, six adults, and himself at Sandy Hook Elementary, Adam Lanza had a confrontation with four staff members, officials said. http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/201...on-with-school-staff-day-before-massacre?lite Three of those staff members were killed Friday; a fourth is being interviewed by investigators Two days before that, Adam Lanza, 20, went to a sporting goods store in Danbury, Conn., and tried to purchase a rifle, but was rebuffed because the state has a waiting period for gun sales, the officials said.
Just in is that the aunt of Adam Lanza has made a statement that Adam was a loner (socially awkward & shy) but a trouble-free boy with absolutely no indications of his intent to mass-murder/rampage ... The aunt also stated that the mother of Adam Lanza, Nancy, had purchased the weapons as *survivalism* in case of economic collapse ...
I blame the faculty at the school for confronting him earlier. I also blame the faculty for not having better security -- probably thought that a "gun free zone" was all they needed to stop a madman. Liberals are not very smart.
*update* Last law-enforcement brieifng for today ~ Lanza will be officially identified post-autopsy ... there seems to be no connection between the mother or death of the mother and the school massacre ... suggesting the motive is the altercation at the school days earlier between Lanza and school officials ... Names of the dead are now released and being read ...
This was in a lilly white rural area, you know, GOP land? That's why the mom had an arson of weapons that her son used on her and all the children. If only the teachers were armed,....oh wait, she was, and it got her and her classroom of students killed.
Exactly where is the argument that immediate gun control action is required? Because I don't remember reading anywhere that somebody sold him a gun.
