Don Pesci: Sandy Hook massacre revisited and reanalyzed

Roses featuring images of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.

VERNON, Conn.

Documents just released years after a shooter murdered 20 students, 6 teachers and his mother, and then killed himself, at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, 2012, have been made available to Connecticut politicians and the general public in answer to a legal action brought by a persistent Hartford Courant.

The documents had been carefully tucked away for five years and clearly point to the social and mental deficiencies of the shooter.

All reports should have been released soon after the shooter’s suicide, because none of the information contained therein could have prejudiced any legal action. It is impossible to put a dead mass-shooter on trial for murder. In the absence of the necessary data unearthed above, a public trial of sorts, some of it sprinkled with absurd speculations, was conducted entirely in the mass media, and eventually one of the weapons used in the mass slaughter, an AR15 semi-automatic rifle, was pronounced guilty and banned in Connecticut.

Arguing that “something must be done” to prevent such slaughters in the future, decision makers in Connecticut banned some weapons, aspersed the state with their emotional solidarity with the victims, passed hastily constructed anti-gun legislation and congratulated themselves on their moral acuity.

The released documents, the Los Angeles Times noted, “which had been kept from the public until now, were part of the mass of writings, records and computer files seized by detectives from the Lanza's home after the killings. The Courant mounted a five-year quest to obtain the unreleased documents, eventually winning an appeal before the Connecticut Supreme Court.”

Even though we know that the Devil resides in details, not everyone was thrilled with the release of the documentation. The story, one letter writer noted, could not be justified because it “exalted the killer” and the rest of the country, the writer mused, “are looking for articles that uplift, as well as inform and educate.” Another writer slammed the paper for “choosing the sensational low road to infamy by publishing on page one… the Newtown killer’s writings, thoughts and other tripe… The killer has no place in our collective memory – ever.” Yet another writer winced, “We do not need to know.”

In an editor’s note, The Hartford Courant pointed out, “Understanding what a mass killer was thinking not only paints a clearer picture of the individual, it helps us identify and understand red flags that could be part of a prevention formula for future mass shootings.”

Several weeks after the shooting, Connecticut Commentary noted, “Everyone in Connecticut whose hearts have been bruised by the loss of life in Sandy Hook -- that is, everyone in Connecticut – is praying for solutions that solve the problems of people who have been bludgeoned by reality. A political milking of the crisis helps only the milkers.”

Those solutions were not forthcoming for a number of reasons: The Devil managed to hold the details close to his chest. Some politicians were, it turned out, very much interested in milking the Sandy Hook cow in such a way as to clamp restrictions on firearms, thus benefiting their future political prospects; and Connecticut’s media, though it tried mightily, had failed to wrest from the Devil the details upon which a real solution to a real problem might have been proposed. The so called “red flags” flourished by the Courant in its own attempt to uncover pertinent details were fluttering six years ago, when the psychotic shooter murdered the children and staff of Sandy Hook Elementary School.

We know now – and knew then – the red flags that signaled mental distress.

PsychDrugShooters.com provides a detailed list of school shootings connected to shooters who have taken drugs. Their brief report on the Sandy Hook shooter notes that “While Lanza’s toxicology report showed no traces of anti-psychotic medications, sources say he was prescribed the antidepressant Celexa by the Yale Child Study Center in his early teens. Lanza also took Lexapro for a short time as a teen, but stopped after his mother reported symptoms such as dizziness, sweating, slurred speech and the inability to open his cereal box.”

A piece in the New Yorker, which draws on an interview with the father of the shooter, asserts that the shooter took no further psychotropic drugs following his reaction to Lexapro. Indeed doctors and nurses who treated the shooter speculate that the shooter's psychosis worsened because of his refusal to take therapeutic drugs.

Clearly, the shooter was anti-social and mentally disturbed. The father believes that his son’s Asperger diagnosis, though it may have been correct, masked a more dangerous psychosis. Neither the father nor the mother of the shooter, who had retreated into an impenetrable shell, expected violence from their son.

They were wrong. But the data suggest an that people who thought that the myriad of gun restrictions imposed after the murders could prevent further instances of this kind were also wrong.

Don Pesci is a columnist based in Vernon, Conn.

Conn. gun crackdown seems to work

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

After a lunatic young gunman murdered 20 first graders and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, Nutmeg State legislators in  2013 broadened the definition of “assault rifle’’ and the sale of gun magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds. State law also requires a permit to buy any gun or ammunition. And Connecticut has a registry of weapon offenders and a universal background check system.

Ron Piniciaro, executive director of Connecticut Against Gun Violence, told WNPR that the state had 53 homicides with guns in 2016, way down from the 92 before the new law took effect.  But then, southern New England has long had among the lowest gun-death rates in America.

Interestingly, reports WNPR, gun sales are still rising in the state. But Mike Lawlor, Connecticut’s undersecretary for criminal-justice policy and planning, says the rigorous permitting process keeps down the violence.

There have been variants of the Connecticut legislation promoted in Congress but as long as the National Rifle Association, which acts as chief lobbyist for the gun-manufacturing industry, holds sway there, don’t expect anything. Polls suggest that most Americans want tougher gun laws, but that counts for little on Capitol Hill!

Gun-control advocates lack the lobbying and campaign-contribution money of the weapons industry and, whatever the opinion polls show, gun lovers vote more intensely than do gun-control folks. And the gun lobby and its servants in Congress and the White House are far more politically ruthless than are gun-control people. For that matter, on a range of issues from health care to taxes to the environment, the majority of the public seems to favor slightly left-of-center positions, if national opinion polls mean much. But they vote at considerably lower percentages than do people on the right. They get the government they deserve.

Don Pesci: Fact-checking Sen. Murphy's claims on gun control

An AR-15.

FactCheck.org recently examined a proposition put forward by Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy who, according to some of his gun-toting critics, will not rest content until he has repealed the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, abolished the National Rifle Association (NRA), and confiscated every "assault weapon" – assault guns, assault knives and, especially prominent just now in Europe, assault vans – from sea to shining sea.

“What we know, Murphy said, "is that states that have tougher gun laws, that keep criminals from getting guns, that keep those dangerous weapons like AR-15s out of the hands of civilians, have dramatically lower rates of gun violence."

FactCheck found that while Murphy was entitled to make up his own mind on assault weapons, he was not entitled to make up his own facts, and the senator was given three Pinocchios.

Let’s deal first with Murphy’s AR-15 claim, Fact Check began. In support of Murphy’s claim that tough gun laws in such places as Connecticut and Chicago that “keep criminals from getting guns, that keep those dangerous weapons like AR-15s out of the hands of civilians, have dramatically lower rates of gun violence," a Murphy spokesperson pointed to “several studies” that backed Murphy’s assertion.

Fact Check examined the studies, the bedrock upon which Murphy’s claims rest, and found: “None of the studies [cited by the spokesperson] address bans on assault weapons such as the AR-15, but the effectiveness of an assault weapons ban was widely studied after Congress imposed a nationwide 10-year ban in 1994.”

Pointing to one such study undertaken by Christopher Koper, of George Mason University, and his colleagues, FactCheck summarizes the finding of that study: “The effectiveness of the ban was inconclusive. Gun violence declined nationwide into the 2000s, but the researchers ‘cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence.' The researchers estimated that the effects of the ban 'may not be fully felt for several years into the future,’ and ‘'should it be renewed, the ban's effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.’ The ban was not renewed.” Murphy’s claim is not supported by the study.

FactCheck notes the deficiencies of the ban itself: The 1994 ban “may not have covered all forms of assault weapons because it did not ban all semiautomatic weapons. Instead, it banned semiautomatic weapons with large-capacity magazines and weapons that ‘appear useful in military and criminal applications but unnecessary in shooting sports or self-defense.’"

The observation raises the ticklish question: What weapons would an effective ban exclude? And the honest answer to the question is all "assault weapons" -- possibly including the recently favored weapons of terrorists, such as knives, vans and exploding pressure cookers -- not to mention a repeal of the Second Amendment supported by former Hartford Courant columnist Bob Engelhart, and the confiscation of all guns in the United States, the Australia solution to gun violence.

The problem with partial bans is that they are “not comprehensive,” a favorite expression of the anti-Second Amendment left. Englehart is right: We should learn to speak of partial weapons bans with the same smiling contempt used by people who speak of partial pregnancies, partial round circles and partial square holes. The ban enacted into law in Connecticut, if nationally replicated, would not substantially drive down murder rates in Chicago or Hartford.

A recent 2016 study published in Criminal Justice Review, FactCheck notes, addressed “the connection between 19 different gun-control laws and violent crime in roughly 1,000 U.S. cities. Kleck [co-author of the study] found that ‘gun control laws generally show no evidence of effects on crime rates, possibly because gun levels do not have a net positive effect on violence rates.’ But there were a few exceptions. Requiring a license to possess a gun and bans on gun purchases by alcoholics appeared to reduce the homicide and robbery rate.” And, of course, the licensing of guns is as common as table salt. The gun violence figures recently used by Murphy as emotional props to acquire campaign funds include suicides, which account for nearly 60 percent of gun crimes.

On this latter point, Murphy defended himself from the Pinocchio assault by pointing out that suicide was also a violent crime. True enough, but it is a different kind of violent crime, entailing much different consequences, and the General Assembly in Connecticut doubtless would not have successfully passed laws banning the AR-15, a weapon not useful in suicides, had it been forced to argue that the ban would reduce the incidence of suicide alone. The shooter in Sandy Hook  first murdered 27 innocent people, 20 of them children, and then turned a pistol on himself, committing suicide.

In a cooler movement, Murphy should ask himself whether the tears poured out in Connecticut and Las Vegas would have flowed so copiously if both shooters had committed suicide before they pulled the trigger on their many victims.

Don Pesci is a Vernon, Conn.-based columnist and a frequent contributor to New England Diary.

Chris Powell: The Alex Jones controversy: Too much deference to Sandy Hook families

Deference to the families of the schoolchildren and educators murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in 2012 has gone much too far.

The latest manifestation of this deference was the decision of Connecticut's only NBC television affiliate, WVIT-TV30 in West Hartford, not to broadcast Megyn Kelly's Sunday night interview with Alex Jones, provocateur of Infowars and promoter of the brazen lie that the school massacre was a hoax. The families of the victims had urged both NBC and WVIT to cancel the broadcast, and according to an internal memorandum obtained by other news organizations, the station chose not to air the interview because "the wounds" of the massacre "have yet to heal."

But wounds so profound never heal. It would be something else if the TV station decided not to broadcast the interview because Jones is just a huckster and, in interviewing him, Kelly became just a huckster, too, or because publicizing Jones even to debunk him would only glorify him with the perpetually deluded.

But instead the station decided that the Sandy Hook families should hold a veto on journalism and political discourse in Connecticut, or that the station should give them such a veto rather than risk criticism for offending them. Of course, nobody had to watch the interview, but the station denied most of Connecticut any choice. Canceling the broadcast, the station essentially decided that the school massacre was and remains proprietary, the exclusive property of the relatives of the victims.

But the massacre was and is not proprietary at all. To the contrary, it was the worst thing that has happened in Connecticut since the Hartford circus fire, in 1944, or, since the fire was an accident rather than a deliberate act, maybe the worst thing that has happened in Connecticut since the massacre of the Pequot tribe in Groton in 1637. The school massacre horrified and pained everyone in the state, and still pains everyone, even if no one can be pained as much as those who lost a loved one by it.

But no amount of pain necessarily vindicates the politics of the pained, and the politics of the Sandy Hook families has often been questionable. They persuaded the General Assembly and Gov. Dannel Malloy to weaken Connecticut's freedom-of-information law by obstructing access to official photos and videos of homicide victims, thereby facilitating official mistakes and misconduct and enabling hoaxers like Jones.

The litigation  that the families have brought to hold firearms manufacturers responsible for abuse of their products contradicts federal law and would nullify the right to bear arms. Now they want the appropriateness of journalism to be determined by hurt feelings, and a weak-kneed news organization has capitulated. Where does that end? 

Use 'a well-regulated militia'

Maybe something good apart from more civil political discourse will come from the shootings at the Republican congressional baseball team's practice in Alexandria, Va. For the incident demonstrated the shortcomings of even the most compelling gun-control proposals, such as requiring background checks for all gun purchases and exchanges, proposals that would have had no bearing on what happened in Alexandria.

So what policy response would be relevant here when guns are so pervasive in society and likely to remain so? How about that "well-regulated militia" cited by the Second Amendment -- trained and tested civilians to be armed in their everyday life and prepared to defend the innocent just as the Capitol Police officers on duty in Alexandria were?

 Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.