<p>I find it quite easy to know she shouldn’t have had an apartment full of guns.</p>
<p>Is that because you believe nobody should have an apartment (I thought they lived in a house?) full of guns, or because she should have known that her son, who had never been violent, would become a mass murderer? If it’s the first, fine, but that’s not a discussion we can have here. </p>
<p>But if it’s the second-- if you think that she in particular shouldn’t have had guns-- then you are using 20/20 hindsight. You’re saying that she should have known what would happen. But she had no way of knowing what would happen. Here’s a mother who was desperately trying to find something her son could do, something to get him out of the house, something he could succeed at. </p>
<p>I thought this article was fascinating, and I think that the father is very brave for being willing to share this with us. I feel like if I was him I would have done everything I could to disappear off the face of the earth. I, too, wonder how the older brother is doing. Of course, I think about the victims’ families as well.</p>
<p>It’s not unheard of for family members who function as caregivers to get so wrapped up in it that they lose themselves and lose sight of the situation. It sounds like Adam’s dysfunction became Nancy’s dysfunction. I read a lot of things in there that made me think, “how could you not have known” but it is so easy when you’re on the outside looking in and with hindsight. I think she did a lot of things wrong, and a lot of things that I’d like to say I wouldn’t have done, but I am blessed to have not gone through what she did so I don’t know what I would have done even if I think I do. None of us do, no matter how vehemently you might think so. Lifes circumstances are always simpler to sort through in print after the fact than they are in real life.</p>
<p>I’m with Hunt on this, although there is some potential hindsight filter here. If you’re in a house with someone who is not mentally normal, you need to keep your guns very restricted. She was, and she didn’t. The article never touched on that. </p>
<p>It also mentioned Ron Paul, but neglected to mention that Lanza had called into an Anarchist “radio show” at University of Oregon and spent 10 minutes or so discussing the horrific mauling of a woman by a chimpanzee (that had occurred previously in CT) resulting in the death of the chimpanzee. He apparently was a somewhat regular listener to that show, judging from the online comments that he made. I listened to that call and it gave me a different impression of the kid.</p>
<p>There is a lot to know here. But it likely won’t ever be known.</p>
<p>My heart goes out to this man and Adam’s brother. I’m with Hunt in that I think having a house full of guns was a colossal, deadly mistake on Adam’s mother’s part. But I say that without judgment: I can understand her clinging to the guns as the only source of a connection between her and this troubled boy. </p>
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<p>Saying families of people with mental disorders shouldn’t have as many guns as other families is saying that people with mental disorders are more violent than others. I’d like to see evidence to support that assertion. I don’t think there is any such evidence. People with mental disorders are probably more likely to be involved in violent crime than others-- mostly as the victim.</p>
<p>I think everyone with guns should keep them restricted. But that’s a different story. </p>
<p>Well, I can relate to Adam’s parents since, as I’ve shared quite often, my 21-year-old son is severely mentally ill. He has NEVER shown any violent streaks, but to be honest, it’s difficult to know how he’s really doing. Sometimes, the pain in his head is so great that he can’t even read. My husband and I work at home, so we are able to monitor him almost constantly. We sure don’t keep any guns around, though! I have learned to live with a constant pit in my stomach, worrying about him. It’s hard to imagine that feeling ever going away.</p>
<p>I do think the father owes every parent who lost a child in that attack an explanation. Did he know that Adam rarely left the house, sitting isolated watching video games? Did he know about the guns? (I think Adam bought one himself at a local gun shop. They weren’t all the mother’s). But most importantly, why did he stay away for 2 years? He left the mother to deal with a horrific situation on her own. Inexcusable. </p>
<p>^^^^^He answers all those questions in the article, except whether or not he knew how many guns there were in the house or how they were secured.</p>
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<p>I believe this article IS his explanation. He also states that the has tried to contact all the victims’ families, but only two have agreed to speak with him. </p>
<p>What more do you want?</p>
<p>The two years that the father was away were the two years of Adam Lanza’s adulthood. He was an adult, who apparently refused to see his father. What do you suggest the father should have done, when his son refused to see him and refused psychiatric treatment? Not that I have any confidence that treatment would have helped him; I’ve paid for a lot of useless treatments for my Aspie son.</p>
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<p>I agree with that statement, but only because I agree with the following statement:</p>
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<p>Not being “mentally normal,” i.e., having some diagnosed psychiatric condition that is defined as outside the range of normal expectation, does not mean that your potential to be a mass murderer is meaningfully higher than that of someone who hasn’t been diagnosed yet. There are some conditions and some delusions that clearly pose a risk of violence, but autism per se is not one of them. That point is made time and time again in the article. Adam’s autism no more explains why he became a mass murderer than the fact that some other mass murderer loved his grandmother explains why that person became a mass murderer. It’s too much to ask that Adam’s mother would have identified the potential for horrific violence in her child, and it’s especially sad to contemplate the hypothesis that the psychiatric condition that had been diagnosed kept people from understanding that there were more serious problems going on simultaneously.</p>
<p>It’s not too much to ask, however, that people who like to have guns around for fun make it really, really difficult for anyone to harm anyone else with those guns. Even if no one living in the house is “not mentally normal.” Even if no one else is living in the house. There are too many things that can happen with guns, and almost none of them are any good.</p>
<p>The two years that the father was away were the two years of Adam Lanza’s adulthood. He was an adult, who apparently refused to see his father. What do you suggest the father should have done, </p>
<p>Who knows if it would have done any good, but the father should not have just given up on his son. Did he ever go over to the mother’s house to try and see the son? Or just be over there and run into the son? Did he know what his son was doing with his time? Did he let the son know he loved him and cared about him? Something. Anything. </p>
<p>I don’t think you can blame him for staying away, did you read the article? He said he wanted to see him so badly he considered hiring a private investigator to find out where he hung out so he could <em>accidentally</em> bump into him, and when he asked Nancy why he wasn’t answering his emails she told him he wasn’t emailing anymore when he was. He bought him a computer and wanted to show up to bring it to him and Adam and Nancy said no. It doesnt sound like Adam wanted him around and Nancy helped Adam keep his distance. </p>
<p>I also recognize that this is one side of the story, but the story he is telling does make sense to me. It sounds like Adam’s mental illness was a black hole that sucked everyone who tried to care for him right into the abyss with him. </p>
<p>^^^^TatinG, did you even read the article before posting your remarks?</p>
<p>I don’t see that the father gave up on his son. Nor do I see that attempting to force a meeting with his adult son was so obviously a superior strategy to waiting.</p>
<p>Piling on to this father is deeply offensive.</p>
<p>Other than telling the mother (and everyone else with guns) to lock up the guns, I don’t even have a suggestion on what the family should have done that would have been clear at the time. If you have a kid with Aspergers, there are a lot of things that don’t work. And you can be sure that some smug busybody will offer useless suggestions, including throwing the kid out to sink or swim, which for Aspies is likely to be sink.</p>
<p>Adam was mentally ill. Who should be responsible for keeping him and others safe from what he might do? If not his parents, who? </p>
<p>TatinG, Why do you persist in assuming that people with mental disorders are more likely to be violent than other people? It’s untrue. It’s also offensive.</p>
<p>Other than restricting access to the guns, which I believe was a HUGE omission by the mother, I’m not sure what else TatinG would have had them do, with the information that they had at the time. You can’t just go around locking people up simply because they are austistic and emotionally troubled.</p>
<p>TatinG, you need to read the article before you write any more comments or pose any more questions. Please. </p>
<p>At some level, that’s an excellent question, but it starts out as a profoundly offensive one.</p>
<p>Pretty much by definition, Adam Lanza was mentally ill. Someone who goes out and kills dozens of people he doesn’t know, without compulsion, is mentally ill. Unfortunately, this particular mental illness was only diagnosed posthumously, for Lanza and for all his victims.</p>
<p>Adam Lanza also had an autistic spectrum disorder. He was mentally ill in that regard, too. But I don’t believe (and the article tells you repeatedly) that autistic spectrum disorders of this type are likely to result in harm to anyone. There was no one protecting others from Lanza, because no one had reason to know he posed a risk of harm to anyone. (Except maybe some strangers online, and maybe maybe once in awhile his mother, with whom he lived.)</p>
<p>As for who is responsible in cases like this . . . when the subject is an adult, and is capable of making his own choices and decisions – as Lanza seemed to be – then as a legal matter his parents are not responsible for protecting him and others from him. Even though he was living with one of them, and especially when he was not seeing and refusing to communicate with the other. In our society, no one is in charge of surveilling non-violent adults to make certain they don’t become killers.</p>
<p>As a moral matter, we all probably believe that anyone who knew the depth of Lanza’s obsession with killing, and what seems like a deteriorating connection to reality, should have come forward and tried to get him some help. But he would have had the right to refuse the help, and it would have been tough to impose it on him.</p>