Adam Lanza's Mother was a Doomsday Prepper.

[JaneyVee]

There’s been some level of mystery about just why Adam Lanza’s first victim, Nancy Lanza, had such a stock of weapons, particularly military style weapons like the .223 Bushmaster. She wasn’t just into guns. She was apparently stocked up for when the economy collapses and when everyone’s on their own with their guns. Yeah, like that.

The Times has already reported that Lanza was a gun enthusiast. But there are lots of gun enthusiasts. And in most cases that just means you like hunting, or going to the hunting range or just are into the guns themselves.

But this sounds a little different.

WHDH 7 in New Hampshire, the local NBC affiliate, interviewed Lanza’s sister Marsha …

“Last time we visited with her in person we talked about prepping and you know, are you ready for what can happen down the line when the economy collapses,” said the gunman’s aunt, Marsha Lanza.
The reporter asked, “Survivalist kind of thing?”

“Yea,” said Marsha Lanza.

Nancy’s guns were supposed to be for self defense. Marsha Lanza called her nephew a special needs child. So far, no motive has been released.

“Just pray for peace,” said Marsha Lanza. “Do I think gun laws need to be changed? No. It’s the person that does the killing, not the gun.”

[Politicalboi]

1. Crazy to the end

“Do I think gun laws need to be changed? No. It’s the person that does the killing, not the gun.”

It's the people who smoke who do the killing, not the cigarette.

[elleng]

2. 'Special needs child' whose needs could not be met by his mother,

who had needs of her own, it appears.

[Spider Jerusalem]

3. I think there's an interesting question to be asked...

about why it is that this particular form of delusional behaviour is something that happens in America but almost nowhere else. You don't hear about Australians or Brits or Germans with a basement shelter and a storage room full of tinned food, bottled water and ammunition. What is it about American society that makes Americans, or some Americans, so much more frightened, paranoid, and expectant of total social collapse?

[JaneyVee]

5. Really good point. Especially Germany, with their sordid past and all, you would think...

[Lucinda]

6. The media... specifically whackos like Glen Beck who get airtime?

[Bonhomme Richard]

8. I really believe that paranoia has become part of our national psyche.

What is terrifying is that it feeds on itself, along with the help of Rush, Beck, Hannity, and anyone that can further their personal agenda with fear.

[leveymg]

9. Cold War hangover. Lots of Americans expected WWIII and that never went away. I wonder of Russia

has the same sort of problem, but I think not because 1) there are a lot fewer guns in private hands there, and 2) it's a country that doesn't have the same sort of widespread Fundamentalist hyper-religiosity that seems to be a trademark of the households or communities of a lot of these mass killings.

Does anyone know if 1) is indeed the case, and 2) whether there's anything about the family's religious orientation (Newtown, CT is NOT a fundie Xtian bastion)?

[BeyondGeography]

4. It's not a pretty picture

[jsr]

7. And she got shot four times in the head in bed with her own gun by her own son.

Very sad.

[HereSince1628]

10. Families living reality TV's Doomsday Preppers...one more psychosocial component

in the complicated knots that must be worked thru to understand American's crisis with mass murders.

I think under the category of psychosocial stressors, everyone saw fictions such as movies, videogames, and even boys playing "army" or "cowboys vs indians" with toy guns as having some potential for transmitting culturally acquired attitudes toward violence.

I'm not sure anyone anticipated the potential for the combination of television and parents transmitting, within an ostensible framework of reality, to children the abilities, attitudes, and willingness for self protection with guns and other weapons.

I doubt that anyone can yet say how much it contributes to such massacres, and ideation/dreaming about massacres, but it certainly suggests we've got a lot of problems to sort through.