<p>Ema, I really enjoy your posts and appreciate that you spend time on this site and share your insights.</p>
<p>Bay, your argument doesn’t always include the gun component. In fact, you said that it was “entirely predictable [not] as to date or method” that something bad would happen to Adam Lanza, as opposed to saying that it was entirely predictable that Adam was going to harm himself or others with a gun. </p>
<p>Obviously it wasn’t OK for Adam to have a gun. At the same time, no one could have predicted his future actions. We can speculate wildly on what would have happened if there had been no guns in the house: would Adam have remained a recluse from the world? Would he have found a way to get weapons to carry out an attack (as others have done)? </p>
<p>I googled Aspergers and suicide, and while I didn’t readily find any statistical data, there are plenty of articles that say the suicide rate is much higher for Aspies (40-50% in one article, 28 times higher in another article, based on clinical observations).</p>
<p>An account I just read said he shot his way into the school.</p>
<p>I guess I wonder that she could have been in such denial about how ill he was. Or maybe he just simply snapped. The proverbial snap. No normal person would keep an arsenal if he were constantly threatening and violent, I don’t think. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and say she truly couldn’t possibly imagine what he did. That said, if you read any account of what is known about his treatments, she was also very non-compliant. It sounds like at some point, after the adverse reaction to the anti-depressant, she stopped making appointments for him. This was when he was still a minor. Once a person turns 18, parents are helpless to “manage” them. Unless there is a threat or one can be talked into “going in”, there is nothing a parent can do. This is what is so scary about mental illness in this age group. They’re incapable of taking care of themselves, they are possibly away from home (Cho), they are now adults and they have access to guns.</p>
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<p>A documentary that I watched indicated that he simply shot out a very large pane of glass next to the door that allowed a person to step through the opening. He obviously had an objective.</p>
<p>There are some unsubstantiated reports that a car similar to Adam’s drove into the high school and left, but they can’t be certain. This was prior to the shooting, and the theory is that a police car that was parked there may have caused a change in plans. However, it is essentially uncorroborated, and is speculation. Not unbelievable though, and would “explain” the grade school choice somewhat as a secondary target, or last resort. Neither here nor there. Just a question of which parents would be grieving. </p>
<p>I recall reading that Nancy may have been thinking about institutionalizing Adam; I don’t know if this was later disputed? </p>
<p>“From what I’ve been told, Adam was aware of her petitioning the court for conservatorship and (her) plans to have him committed," Flashman told FoxNews.com. "Adam was apparently very upset about this. He thought she just wanted to send him away. From what I understand, he was really, really angry. I think this could have been it, what set him off.”</p>
<p><a href=“EXCLUSIVE: Fear of being committed may have caused Connecticut gunman to snap | Fox News”>http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/12/18/fear-being-committed-may-have-caused-connecticut-madman-to-snap/</a></p>
<p>I suppose it is possible that Adam and Nancy had a suicide pact. </p>
<p>For those of you who are still interested, Andrew Solomon, the author of the article, was on “Fresh Air” today talking about it with Terry Gross. I heard about 10 minutes. What he described was far, far different from what many of you are assuming – parents who, although separated, were actively involved with their son, and looking for solutions. One of the problems was that Adam, unlike most people with Asperger’s diagnoses, never accepted the diagnosis at all. He didn’t get treatment because he was totally unwilling to cooperate with treatment; he rejected the hypothesis that he was ill.</p>
<p>Adam was diagnosed with Aspergers at 13. He also had a diagnosis of OCD.</p>
<p>Peter had not separated from Adam emotionally. He said that he had rejected his parents, too, at about the same point in his life, but then after a few years had a close relationship with them again. Peter kept sending messages, talking to Nancy about ways to have contact with Adam. He thought things were getting better, and that he would get to have a relationship with Adam again, soon.</p>
<p>One interesting fact – the article was reviewed by Peter’s lawyer prior to publication to make certain that Peter wasn’t quoted “saying anything actionable.” Gross didn’t ask, and Solomon didn’t volunteer, whether any changes were made at the lawyer’s or Peter’s request.</p>
<p>Peter contacted the author because the author wrote a well-received book, Far From The Tree, about children who differed significantly from their parents, both geniuses and criminals, including a chapter on Dylan Klebold and his family. He had done extensive research in the autism community for that book.</p>
<p>Gross asked whether this was an indication that people with autism were at risk for violence, and Solomon said, essentially, that no one with a shred of knowledge believes that at all, but that there are many uninformed people in the world who do believe that.</p>
<p>Is there any evidence that antisocial lonely young men are at risk for violence?</p>
<p>I honestly don’t care what the research shows. I know as a gun owner and parent of a sometimes solitary, sometimes a bit depressed and angry young man, I would never leave a gun in my home where he could touch it without his fathers supervision. </p>
<p>That is so obviously stupid and unforgivable that it really doesn’t require any further analysis. </p>
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<p>I think most people shouldn’t be allowed to have guns. I think this country’s love affair with guns leads to thousands of deaths, including those at Sandy Hook. But my opinion is the minority, and the NRA spends a lot of money to squash any politicians who agree with me. </p>
<p>So, given the current political and legal situation in this country, and the judicial interpretation of the Second Amendment, I think many people would argue that yes, it was OK for Adam to have a gun. Having Asperger’s or autism and being OCD are not reasons to prevent someone from owning a gun. </p>
<p>I haven’t heard the Terry Gross interview yet, but what JHS describes is how I interpreted his article. </p>
<p>The lack of understanding about the condition is sad. Being Aspergers doesn’t mean depression or limited life prospects and suggestions that his ending was predictable is silly._Menendez
Brothers had everything and still used guns to kill their parents. </p>
<p>Okay, if it is true that Nancy was trying to have Adam committed then it explains a lot. But, having someone committed is not an easy task and more importantly, it’s not a permanent solution. They come back angry, sometimes a week or two later. No, he shouldn’t have had a gun.</p>
<p>Fire and rain,</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter what the law says (and that wasn’t my question anyway), if Adam is living in Nancy’s home, it is her right and responsibility to determine whether he can posses a gun, not his. </p>
<p>It is sad all around and want to know what I think the saddest thing of all is? What happened won’t really change anything. Sure, schools might change security procedures, try to make schools more ‘locked in’, but it won’t prevent tragedies. We have the fact that legally people can easily possess rapid fire weapons like Adam Lanza used, with large magazines, that make a mass killing like this possible, if he had a revolver or a hunting rifle and went into the school, some may have died, but it wouldn’t be 20 some odd people killed in 10 minutes. What he used was one step down from a military weapon designed to kill a lot of people quickly. </p>
<p>Nancy Lanza apparently was very caught up in the gun culture, she was really proud of it, and also from I recall reading in other pieces was also one of the doomsday crowd and may have collected weapons against the coming doom (I think she believed the economy was going to collapse)…unfortunately, she also I guess didn’t take any of the classes on gun safety that the NRA and other groups give, that talk about the need to secure weapons safely. I have a friend who is an enthusiast, we have some interesting discussions, but I respect him because he is both a hunter and sport shoots at competitions, and he teaches those classes, and he said that one of the things he teaches is respect for the weapons, you don’t play with them, and you constantly need to be aware of potential issues with them, whether it be kids or being stupid and leaving them loaded or whatnot. We talked about the Lanza case and his first reaction was that while there is never any way to know if someone will turn violent, that Nancy couldn’t have known Adam would turn into a mass murderer, that on the other hand when faced with the unknown, you err on the side of caution. You have a little kid running around the house, you wouldn’t leave a gun out, you have a kid like Adam you don’t know what is going on with him, you don’t allow unhinidered access to them. Nancy Lanza had a gun safe if the reports are correct, yet the guns were not locked up. His point is if someone has problems, even if 95% of people with mental illness are not violent, you can never tell if the person in question is in the 5 or 95%, and you assume the worst. There are plenty of little kids who found a parents gun and didn’t get hurt by it, but that doesn’t mean you leave it lying around, assuming nothing will happen, and with Adam, she shouldn’t have taken the chance.</p>
<p>I also kind of wonder if the strain of taking care of Adam hadn’t driven her over the edge, whether depression or something worse. The survivalist stuff, if true, could have been an indication she had other issues (and no, I can’t claim she did or didn’t, I am not trained, but professionals did write about that and speculated). Maybe he had her so driven to distraction with worry she couldn’t function, depression alone is nasty, and it left her unable to think about what she was doing, but the fact that those guns were accessible meant that in the end, it cost her son’s life, her life, and those little kids and teachers, and ruined the rest of the family too. </p>
<p>And yes, the other problem is as a society we do a crappy job dealing with mental illness and it transcends politics, because all are guilty. Liberals, repelled by the way the mentally ill were treated (and rightfully so), make it so that committments are difficult, and I dealt with this, my mother in law was diagnosably mentally ill, big time, had gone off the deep end, yet depending on where you live in NJ, it can be extremely difficult to get someone committed, because there is such a fear of abuse…others wanted to get rid of treatment facilities and mental hospitals and such, saying it 'isn’t the role of government to take care of the mentally ill, better done by families and the private health world", so you had people with mental illness put out on the street, and sometimes with tragic consequences. Part of that is quite honestly, we don’t want to deal with it, it scares us, and think about this, Peter Lanza is up in the top tier of earners, he pulls in 7 figures a year in his position, easily, and yet even with his money they couldn’t do anything for Adam…imagine what it is like for those with little or no resources? Take a look at health insurance, and mental health issues are treated as annoyances, most plans limit treatment to in effect temporary triage, and long term care is strictly limited, and every attempt to try and bring mental health care on a par with medical care via the law has been rejected. </p>
<p>I sympathize with the father, I don’t know what I would do if my child did what Adam did, and I could only imagine how he feels,the guilt, frustration he couldn’t do enough, being in effect helpless. I have a little more sympathy for the mom then I did when it happened, but I still find her allowing a kid who was troubled like Adam was to have access to guns the way he did, people can argue until they are blue in the face that the mentally ill are not that likely to be violent, or that Adam showed no signs of violence, but the answer to that is faced with uncertainty, faced with a troubled kid who apparently she knew was a lot more than Aspergers, you don’t take the chance, even if statistically mentally ill people as a whole are not violent, because you don’t know which ones will be (and yes, ‘normal’ people kill too, but in their case, there was generally no sign until they snap, you can’t say that about Adam). What really saddens me is basically nothing has changed since this tragedy, we remember it, there are memorial funds and scholarships in the kids names, but what changed? Not a whole heck of a lot, and I doubt it will, and that is the real tragedy. </p>
<p>Thank you musicprnt. Very well said.</p>
<p>just wanted to note, that it is a myth that people just “snap”. generally there are signs of difficulty, preoccupation with violence, if not outright history of violence. there were several signs in Adam’s case, that were truly overlooked and treated as “normal” for him but really should have been of concern to his parents.</p>
<p>"Lanza was obsessed with violence, with school shootings. He drew up a spread sheet about mass murders. One of his few outside interests was shooting guns, and his mother’s Christmas gift to him was a check to buy another gun.</p>
<p>“Dr. Charles Herrick, chairman of the psychiatry department at Danbury Hospital, said while it was obvious from reading the report that Lanza was obsessed with violence, he also appeared very apt at hiding it from people.”</p>
<p>and this from a book he wrote "After the robbery, Granny’s Son shoots Granny in the head with a shotgun. Later, another character in the book says, “I like hurting people … Especially children.”</p>
<p><a href=“Report: Mother said Adam Lanza had 'no feelings'”>Report: Mother said Adam Lanza had 'no feelings';
<p>upon reflection the thing that disturbed me about Peter Lanza’s comment; </p>
<p>“I want people to be afraid this could happen to them” </p>
<p>is that he in a sense reinforced that this tragedy came out of nowhere, which I don’t think is fair or accurate. This young man had no evaluation done for years, yet Peter Lanza claims mental health professionals did not see any risk of violence. But they did not know how bad things had gotten. Nor is it fair to imply that other parents of teens/young adult with Aspergers should be worried as it is unlikely this was the contributing diagnosis to this tragedy. just my late night thoughts…</p>
<p>It is the suicide risk connection that makes the Aspergers diagnosis relevant. Adam killed himself. </p>
<p>you’re correct, except that his behavior really pointed to another diagnosis, schizophrenia possibly and his rampage was way more than a suicide.</p>
<p>I taught a boy in school who I believe is a psychopath and will be dangerous in the future. Very chilling to have a child who shows absolutely no empathy for others; none. Who seems to feel no pain himself, and has absolutely no connection with grandparents and mother other than to regard them as bothersome people who usually give him things. Who stands there and tells other kindergartners to “go and hit her (me) because there are more of us than her,” who manipulates and lies, and hurls objects at others but just because he feels like it and he wants to, not because he is angry. Who calmly says, “I will kill you all.” I have handled angry, angry children, and sad children, and emotionally disturbed children, children from broken homes and children from abusive homes, but none have chilled me like that child. </p>
<p>Can you imagine being this child’s mother? Show me a cure for psychopaths…</p>