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Would it change things if... hypothetically...
1. Nancy Lanza did keep her guns locked up in a safe.
2. Nancy Lanza was attempting to have her son Adam committed.
3. Her son found out about #2.
4. Adam attacked Nancy and knocked her out, obtained the keys to the safe, got a gun, and shot his mom.
5. The rest is sad history.
Hypothetically, of course...
Would it change things if... hypothetically...
1. Nancy Lanza did keep her guns locked up in a safe.
2. Nancy Lanza was attempting to have her son Adam committed.
3. Her son found out about #2.
4. Adam attacked Nancy and knocked her out, obtained the keys to the safe, got a gun, and shot his mom.
5. The rest is sad history.
Hypothetically, of course...
Entirely possible. We don't know. It's not reasonable to blame Nancy Lanza when she is not here to defend herself and the facts are not yet known. BTW, why don't we know how the guns were stored? Do the facts not aid the anti-gun agenda?
Back in the Sixties, there was a student at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln (home of spree-killer Charles Starkweather), a young man named Duane Pope, who wrote a paper on the individual's propensity for violence. His argument was "You can't predict a criminal type because each individual is unque". He then returned to the small town in the western porion of the state, and robbed a bank, killing three people in the process.
Pope got a sppedy trial and a quick death sentence, but escaped his fate when the Supreme Court voided all death sentences in 1972, Since he robbed a Natiional Bank, he was transferred to Federal custody, and has been quielty rotting away in Oklahome for many years.
My point here is that no matter what legislated "remedies" are proposed, our increasingly complicated society seems determined to produce aberrations of behavior, in groups as well as individuals, who will test, and eventually undo the supposed "safeguards". That, in my own opinion, is also why the economy melted down five years ago -- human foibles can be likened to steam in a leaky and unsafe boilet -- bottle them up and the pressure will eventually exert its destructive potential somewhare else.
The Lanzas might also, in some ways, be compared to Hickock and Smith -- the two killers in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood; individually, they might not have peovoked what happened, but the two taken together made for a strange and dangerous combination. There are a near-infinite number of personalities out there, some badly warped, and an exponenrtially large number of combilnations.
The concerns of the authority-obsessed to the contrary, there will, sooner or later, be another incident to belie another pursuit of absolute security. It's just not attainable on this side of the cemetery.
The first question is how did she secure the firearms? We don't know that because the authorities haven't told us. They may have been locked in a gunsafe and the son found out how to open it without her knowledge. There are many unanswered questions surrounding this incident.
I know. The reporting on this story has seemed strange to me from the beginning. If our press was really free we would have alot of these questions answered.
Imagine having to be the mother of a person so mentally ill that they were capable of what Adam Lanza did? Imagine having to face the reality of having to commit your own child? It's hard enough to raise reasonably mentally healthy kids, but I would never want to have to deal with what Nancy Lanza probably had to. I think trying to find someone to blame is not the appropriate response. She's dead. We of course should look at the situation and analyze how this could happen and what could possibly prevent it from happening again. But worrying about which particular individual to blame isn't going to help.
Imagine having to be the mother of a person so mentally ill that they were capable of what Adam Lanza did? Imagine having to face the reality of having to commit your own child? It's hard enough to raise reasonably mentally healthy kids, but I would never want to have to deal with what Nancy Lanza probably had to. I think trying to find someone to blame is not the appropriate response. She's dead. We of course should look at the situation and analyze how this could happen and what could possibly prevent it from happening again. But worrying about which particular individual to blame isn't going to help.
No its not and being a new father myself, it would be hard to admit your child had something wrong with them.
Does blame bring anyone back? Do you really think blaming a victim accomplishes anything? She exercised a right and paid the ultimate price.She had hope her child would lead a normal life and did what she could to accomplish that. hindsight isn't even 20/20 in this case.
What is necessary is not to blame, but to analyze prior events, beginning in childhood. What is clear is that unknowing actions resulted in this outcome.
Some of those could be:
Pressure on Adam to succeed in life, which required going to college, which required going to school
Being with the general population in school, which made him anxious and made his symptoms worse
Pressure on mentally ill to fit into the general society
Introduction to guns and violent video games
Moving and changing schools was too much to bear for his fragile mind
Family falling apart
Loosing contact with brother and father
Nancy not wanting to take advantage of the local support group
Since his mother had the most influence on the course of his life, it is possible that her choices and actions contributed to the outcome, as well as of his father and the general state of affairs with mentally ill.
No its not and being a new father myself, it would be hard to admit your child had something wrong with them.
The parents who start programs earliest have the best chance of good outcome. Those who understand the problems and are willing to tackle them are the ones who do best. Denial is a type of negligence that hurts the child and makes it about the parent's feelings, not the best interests of the child. It's the parent's resposibility as an adult and guardian of that child to make the correct proactive choices to help the child who has problems.
Adam Lanza was TOO weird, no way to mistake him for someone who could function in society. No way. He had these episodes two or three times a WEEK, where she had to remove him from school. He should not even have been allowed to attend a normal school with a record like that. He should NEVER have been allowed to go anywhere near a gun.
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