Nancy Lansa was a victim, too

[TimberGSD2]

Originally Posted by JakodaCD OA

I think something also not touched on, is how HARD it is to actually get help for mentally ill people. If your kid threatens to kill you and you turn them in, they are let back out within a short period of time.

I am pulling this out because it hits close to home. I have a very good friend who slept for years with a deadbolt lock on her bedroom door. She was terrified of her son. She tried for years to get him some help and to no avail. Even after he started threatening to kill his family, she was told until he did bodily harm to them, there was nothing that could be done. He was finally arrested after beating her up. And 24 hours later the police returned him to the home.

There are very few options for people with mental illness anymore. Even for people who are trying to get help for their loved ones with issues.

While we do not know the details of how he was able to obtain the weapons, we do not know if they were locked up, if he was able to just walk in and get them so I'm not even going to say "she should have known better". A person **** bent on doing something like this is going to do it, they will find a way.

And while we are hearing she had issues, doomsday prepper type of things, that is speculation, sadly no one will ever really know what happened. I think we need to learn from this tragedy and see what we can do as a society to keep it from happening in the future. Maybe this will wake up something in our system that will start helping those with mental illness.

[robk]

Our guns are not for security. My kids shoot competitively.

[Jax08]

The only report that has come out that is credible is that Nancy Lanza was gone for 2 days prior to the shooting and had arrived home late the night before. There are reports that she was going to put him in a "school" because she couldn't handle him anymore. Reports from little kids that he was very "angry" when he entered the classroom.

Was she to close to the situation and WOULDN'T see the danger? Or had he not had any episodes of violence so she had no reason to suspect an issue? We will never, ever know. The one person that can tell us that is dead.

Decades ago, the government institutionalized the asylums. They just put the people out and shut the doors. these were NOT good places. But the responsibility to care for people that needed professional care was put back on the parents with no avenues provided for them to do so.

I'm all for gun rights. We have a house full of rifles and shotguns. Nothing is locked up but the guns are unloaded before they come back in and the bullets are kept separate. However, I see no logical reason for a person to own a semi automatic military style assault rifle that can pop out 3-5 bullets a second. We dont' know if he had access to the guns. We know he probably had two days by himself to figure out how to break into a gun safe. Probably not a hard thing for a person who was supposedly a genius.

I think there are so many factors in this that we can't just point the finger at the guns or at mental health. And so many rumors surrounding this woman that until an official report comes out and even then I doubt we will know the whole truth.

[GSDElsa]

A lot of misconceptions about this "miliary style assault rifle" nonsense still.....it was a semi-automatic rifle he used that cannot fire any faster than a person can pull a trigger. No slower or faster than any other non-manually cycled firearm on the planet.

The term that is CONSTANTLY thrown around in this debate since this tragedy revolves around terminology that is made up by politicians. 223 Remington firearms is found in anything from single-shot top-break rifles to 5-round bolt-action rifles to widely illegal full-automatic rifles. "Assault rifle" used by media and politicans since this event refers to a 223 Rem semi-automatic rifle with features such as a bayonet lug, pistol grip, or folding stock. None of which make it any more deadly, or faster, than any other semi-automatic rifle on the market....and certainly does not contain any features which makes the cyclic rate of fire any faster than any other firearm. They just make it "scarier" looking.

And just to put the high-capacity vs. "normal" capacity magazine debate into perspective.......speed shooters can fire about 60 shots from 6-round revolvers in under 20 seconds, which I believe includes re-loading every 6 shots. Fast shooters (not even the "fastest") can unload a 10-round magazine from a semi-auto in a few seconds, drop one magazine, and reload another in another few seconds.

[LoveEcho]

Just because she was a gun enthusiast, doesn't mean she had mental health issues (much of the "she had her own issues" that I'm hearing is based solely on the fact that she owned guns, including AR's, and was a doomsday prepper). Also, the vast majority of the public have NO idea what "automatic weapon" and "assault weapon" etc means... and what their availability is. Also, a concealed carry permit is extremely difficult to get (this varies depending on the state, but in my state it's a VERY extensive process).

I was raised in a home with guns. I grew up shooting competitively. My father ALWAYS kept the guns locked up, and we never knew where the key was. He either had it on him, or it was locked in a separate safe. When we became old enough to have guns of our own, they were not so strict with lock up, because they were more for security at that point. I own many handguns, I shoot competitively, I own a pistol that I carry daily that is semi-automatic. Most people have no clue what that actually means. That gun saved my life once...

I'm a bit confused why the NRA, a sporting association, should have to donate to mental health causes? How was the NRA responsible at ALL for what happened? It makes me so angry to see people calling for the murder of the NRA president, etc. And yet, people with guns are the ones who are crazy?

The most homicides in the US are committed with...baseball bats. We don't ban them because the vast majority of baseball bat owners own them responsibly for sporting purposes... oh wait...

The kid could have just as easily blown the school up. Or stabbed children, as has happened at an epidemic rate in China. It's impossible to say how responsible Nancy Lanza was, in terms of her weapons being locked up or not, etc. I will say that if your child has mental health issues, you should NOT have weapons in your house.

[Sunflowers]

Maybe it's because if you know you have a crazy kid, you don't teach him to shoot and you don't leave guns where he can get at them.

[Jax08]

How do you know when you have a crazy kid that is capable of violence on that scale? How do we know that he was crazy all along? it's entirely possible that he had some kind of mental break. From some reports, if they are true, she was talking about putting him in a school or some type of institution just prior to the shooting. How do we know that didn't twist something in his head and set him off?

I'm not ready to pass judgement on this woman quite yet without at least seeing some kind of official report that she was the reason he was twisted.

[Konotashi]

I completely agree.
And considering the fact I have been diagnosed with a mental illness, I do NOT blame her for not seeing the signs.
Neither of my parents thought anything was wrong with me until I flipped one day and was admitted to the behavioral hospital.
Had I not 'snapped' that day, I would likely still be undiagnosed.

Mental illness is a touchy subject and the signs aren't always blatantly obvious.

[JeanKBBMMMAAN]

Originally Posted by LoveEcho

J
The most homicides in the US are committed with...baseball bats. We don't ban them because the vast majority of baseball bat owners own them responsibly for sporting purposes... oh wait...

snopes.com: Gun Deaths vs. Baseball Bat Deaths

[Sunflowers]

Originally Posted by Konotashi

Mental illness is a touchy subject and the signs aren't always blatantly obvious.

Very true.
But in this case, she knew.

Fact is, we will never know everything about how this perfect storm came about, or if it could have been prevented.

This is why people are so obsessed with finding out why: they want a reason, so they can box it up nicely, and then take steps so that it may never happen again.

The sad and horrible thing is that it will, even if we find out why.

There have always been evil people or psychopaths, or sociopaths -- you just never heard about the atrocities immediately and globally because there was no Internet.