Sandy Hook Gunman Chose School Because He Was Pedophile

[Sancho]

46. Lots of things...but just for one...

she would likely have had to secure the guns. Lanza was well-known to be an emotional risk.

Insurance questions would likely have denied insurance (and therefore a license) without special security if at all. Maybe she would have been free to go to a shooting range, but not have guns at home.

The types of guns and numbers of guns would be on the license. It's speculation, but even a superficial questionnaire or interview or references would have revealed someone in the house with depression, etc. Those would be red flags for a home with guns, or some follow up that would have made guns more secure - or else no license.

A report issued by the Office of the Child Advocate in November 2014 said that Lanza had the developmental disorder Asperger's syndrome, and as a teenager suffered from depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, but concluded that they had "neither caused nor led to his murderous acts." The report went on to say "his severe and deteriorating internalized mental health problems... combined with an atypical preoccupation with violence... (and) access to deadly weapons... proved a recipe for mass murder".[14]

These were guns available in the home of someone diagnosed to be depressed:

A large quantity of unused ammunition was recovered inside the school along with three semi-automatic firearms found with Lanza: a .223-caliber Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle, a 10mm Glock 20SF handgun, and a 9mm SIG Sauer P226 handgun.[5] Outside the school, an Izhmash Saiga-12 shotgun was found in the car Lanza had driven.[5][31]

If a regular license simply examines the easy possession of guns, they would spot people like this. If the license was not denied, it would likely be restricted in terms of gun security, number of guns, type of guns, and amount of ammunition.

Report of the Office of the Child Advocate[edit]
The Report of the Office of the Child Advocate concluded: "There was not one thing that was necessarily the tipping point driving Lanza to commit the Sandy Hook shooting. Rather there was a cascade of events, many self-imposed, that included: loss of school; absence of work; disruption of the relationship with his one friend; virtually no personal contact with family; virtually total and increasing isolation; fear of losing his home and of a change in his relationship with Mrs. Lanza, his only caretaker and connection; worsening OCD; depression and anxiety; profound and possibly worsening anorexia; and an increasing obsession with mass murder occurring in the total absence of any engagement with the outside world. Adam increasingly lived in an alternate universe in which ruminations about mass shootings were his central preoccupation".[129]
The authors also noted that despite multiple developmental and mental health problems, Lanza had not received adequate mental health treatment. They wrote: "It is fair to surmise that, had Lanza's mental illness been adequately treated in the last years of his life, one predisposing factor to the tragedy of Sandy Hook might have been mitigated".[130]

A license is not a cure-all without failures, but it would make it much more difficult for mass murders. It's simple too.