I’ve had enough of reading about more innocent lives lost to violent outbursts. I’m also tired of our obsession with profiling gunmen. Why did he do it? Was he quiet? Was he clever? Was he a recluse?
The papers will point to his mental disorder or parents breakup as the reason. But surely living through a divorce and struggling with a mental disorder does not in itself lead to crimes of this magnitude being committed:
Three years previously, in 2009, Nancy and Peter Lanza had divorced after 28 years of marriage. The break up was traumatic, leaving the couple’s sons devastated. Ryan Lanza was living away at university, meaning that his brother Adam, four years younger, was left at home alone with their mother at their £350,000 house.
He was not well known to neighbours, who describe him as being reclusive and troubled.
And when the news broke on Friday of the murder of 26 people at a primary school in the town, and Ryan Lanza was hastily identified as the killer, people who knew the family knew they had named the wrong brother.
“Adam Lanza has been a weird kid since we were five years old,” said Tim Dalton, a neighbour and former classmate, on Twitter. “As horrible as this was, I can’t say I am surprised.”
“This was a deeply disturbed kid,” a family insider said. “He certainly had major issues. He was subject to outbursts from what I recall.”
A further family friend said he had acted as though he was immune to pain.
“A few years ago when he was on the baseball team, everyone had to be careful that he didn’t fall because he could get hurt and not feel it,” said the friend. “Adam had a lot of mental problems.”
What we should really be focusing on is strategies to help ensure that we don’t have to read about another school shooting again.
Click on the link to read Get Rid of Your Guns!
Click on the link to read Explaining the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting to Children
Click on the link to read Helping Kids Cope in the Aftermath of Sandy
Click here to read ‘Helping Our Children Make Sense of Natural Disasters’.
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