“4 If you know your child has issues why do you have guns in the house?”
More than anything else, I think this will come into perspective as the critical element that provided Adam Lanza the spark to change from what he was in high school (a shy kid with Asperger’s syndrome) into a mass killer.
At age 20, he could not buy a handgun in Connecticut (not sure about the Bushmaster, but the answer is probably no for that, as well). Yet his mother had all these weapons available at home. We may never know her reasons, she isn’t here to explain herself any longer. Perhaps the ex-husband and brother will help with clarifying her reasons to own them.
There’s a good piece up on Drudge’s page that describes Adam in high school — awkward, shy, perhaps “developmentally disabled” but clearly not [completely] autistic. Probably nothing that would indicate future violent behavior. Not “normal”, per se, but not a nihilistic killer.
Something happened in the two years since he graduated. Pure speculation on my part, but I’ll guess that he didn’t try (or wasn’t able) to get a job after high school, and because of his disability, withdrew more into himself, perhaps into violent computer games and certain types of music that tends toward the dark and violent (I read that he was into something called “goth” music). Others have said that schizophrenia can begin to emerge in young men his age.
I can see a combination of various factors “pulling him downward” in the space between high school and yesterday. But again, without the close availability of his mother’s weapons, he and those he killed would be alive today. Would you keep your weapons within easy reach of an unstable family member? Or take appropriate action to secure them?
Did she not see him “slipping”? Guess we’ll never know.