A Mother, a Gun Enthusiast and the First Victim (Nancy Lanza)

[freshwest]

25. It's very difficult when the media in many venues promotes this world view as the sane response.

Prudent persons do such things as maintain three days of food, water, fresh batteries for news, toiletries, etc for natural disasters, savings, credit, their home and vehicles.

The survivalist mentality is an American tradition. I remember people afraid of atomic war in the 1950s and building bunkers with supplies. Those who live in remote areas think the same way. It's not mental illness but logistics. Even people in cities have seen things get difficult or dangerous with power outages, snow storms, etc.

This newer version, though, feeds on apocalyptic visions with some basis in reality and are even discussed here. Global warming and the effects on population shifts that are not advantageous to those in areas lost to poverty, flood or famine, nor the people they are moving toward to obtain employment, land and food. The BP spill and fracking that damage the water supply and health, the nuke accident in Japan, and fear of mad cow and adulterated food work on people to keep them in a state that is beyond normal concern, even if they see none of this in their immediate surroundings, but watch or listen to media or read the internet about it.

So you will have people that won't classify as mentally ill, as there is no way to tell if they are off the wall or just swallowing the crazy that is being pumped into all of our heads if we don't consider the sources and intent. I doubt mobs burning witches or lynching saw anything wrong or mentally ill with it, as when you have that many people doing something, like an army, it can't be wrong, 'because everyone's doing it.'

Reluctantly, I've come to the conclusion that the only thing that would have stopped this would be a restriction on the type of guns she bought legally. She was not a criminal, and stories about how it's illegally obtained weapons doing these killings, are a knee-jerk defense mechanism. Since most of these things are done with legally purchased weapons by people with means, not the gangster on the street. That's first.

Second, is the almost impossibiity of stopping this flow of weaponry and ammunition, as ALEC has promoted guns in every venue, and they are not going to stop. Next, they'll be pushing for the baby Jesus in the manager at nativity scenes with a handgun, with Mary and Joseph toting a rifle and machine gun next. That's how crazy we've become.