Quoted Text

Connecticut Shop Where Nancy Lanza Bought 1 Of Her Guns Raided By Feds
Recent Thefts Of Firearms Reported At Riverview Sales In East Windsor
December 20, 2012 11:29 PM

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Federal agents raided an eastern Connecticut gun shop on Thursday, the same gun shop that sold one of the weapons used by the Newtown elementary school shooter.

Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, assisted by police, moved in on Riverview Sales at 4 Prospect Hill Road in East Windsor at around 5:15 p.m., reported Len Besthoff of CBS 2 sister station WFSB in Hartford.

Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 children and six adults with a Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle in Newtown last Friday, the second-worst mass shooting in United States history. At least one of the guns the 20-year-old had on him during the attack was purchased at Riverview Sales by his mother, Nancy Lanza, who was shot to death by her son prior to his rampage at the school.

All indications are Thursday’s raid was not directly related to the Newtown massacre investigation, but, as Besthoff reported, it was related to several other crimes committed at the store, including the recent theft of an AR-15 and the attempted theft of a .50-caliber long gun, both by a man with mental illness, Besthoff reported.

Police and ATF agents converged on the store and the plaza was later cordoned off by local cops, while the feds reportedly went through the store’s inventory............................>>>>...................>>>>...................http://newyork.cbslocal.com/20.....guns-raided-by-feds/

Quoted Text

Lanza's older brother, 24-year-old Ryan, of Hoboken, N.J., was being questioned, but a law enforcement official said he was not believed to have had a role in the rampage. Investigators were searching his computers and phone records, but he told law enforcement he had not been in touch with his brother since about 2010.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the unfolding investigation.

At one point, a law enforcement official mistakenly identified the gunman as Ryan Lanza. Brett Wilshe, a friend of Ryan Lanza's, said Lanza told him the gunman may have had his identification. Ryan Lanza apparently posted Facebook page updates Friday afternoon that read, "It wasn't me" and "I was at work."

Quoted Text

Connecticut school shooting: troubled life of Adam Lanza, a fiercely intelligent killer
Adam Lanza was reclusive, painfully shy and intensely bright. He also lived in a house full of guns.

When the news broke that Ryan Lanza, right, was hastily identified as the killer, people who knew the family knew they had named the wrong brother Photo: ENP/AP
Harriet Alexander, David Barrett, Laura Donnelly and Jon Swaine in Newtown 7:36PM GMT 15 Dec 2012
Set on the brow of a gently sloping hill, surrounded by two acres of woodland and well-tended lawns, the spacious property looked like any American family's dream home.
A wide veranda had views across the gardens. A swimming pool, flanked by a white pool house, was round the back of the two-storey building.
Yet behind the front door in the affluent Connecticut community of Newtown, all was not well at 36 Yogananda Street.
Three years previously, in 2009, Nancy and Peter Lanza had divorced after 28 years of marriage. The break up was traumatic, leaving the couple's sons devastated. Ryan Lanza was living away at university, meaning that his brother Adam, four years younger, was left at home alone with their mother at their £350,000 house.
Yogananda Street in Newtown, Connecticut (Rex Features)
Related Articles
Twin survivors reveal gunshot terror 16 Dec 2012
Father of victim: I'm not mad 16 Dec 2012
'A smart but shy nerd' 14 Dec 2012
Parents describe how teacher saved their children's lives 15 Dec 2012
Teachers sacrificed themselves to save pupils 15 Dec 2012
'Last time I felt like this was 9/11' 15 Dec 2012
He was not well known to neighbours, who describe him as being reclusive and troubled.
And when the news broke on Friday of the murder of 26 people at a primary school in the town, and Ryan Lanza was hastily identified as the killer, people who knew the family knew they had named the wrong brother.
"Adam Lanza has been a weird kid since we were five years old," said Tim Dalton, a neighbour and former classmate, on Twitter. "As horrible as this was, I can't say I am surprised."
"This was a deeply disturbed kid," a family insider said. "He certainly had major issues. He was subject to outbursts from what I recall."
A further family friend said he had acted as though he was immune to pain.
"A few years ago when he was on the baseball team, everyone had to be careful that he didn't fall because he could get hurt and not feel it," said the friend. "Adam had a lot of mental problems."
Lanza's brother Ryan reportedly told police that his sibling had autism or Asperger's syndrome, and a personality disorder.
He gave no details, but anti-social disorder - also known as sociopathy - is the type most closely linked with violence and criminal behaviour.
Studies have suggested that 50 per cent of the prison population meet the criteria for the diagnosis.
Those with such disorders are more likely to embark on impulsive, risk-seeking behaviour, in an attempt to escape feeling empty or emotionally void.
In such cases, they are likely to have little regard for the consequences of their actions, and are unlikely to experience fear.

Ryan also said that he had not seen him since 2010.
As the news was breaking, Ryan was at work in accountancy firm Ernst and Young, sitting at his desk in Times Square.
To his horror, the 24-year-old found that his name was flashing up on the television news networks, wrongly accused of the massacre. He fled the office, jumping on a bus to return home to the house he shared in New Jersey. Shaken, he told his neighbour in an online message that he thought his mother was dead and he knew who was responsible for the multiple murder.
"It was my brother," he said.
Those on the autistic spectrum have a more limited emotional range and can miss social cues, making it more difficult for them to communicate and feel empathy with others. Difficulties communicating can cause frustration, which can spill over into aggression.
Several studies have found that violence and criminal behaviour are no more common in those diagnosed with autism than they are in the general population.
Asperger's syndrome is a type of autism which is more commonly diagnosed in those with higher than average intelligence.
And Lanza was said by classmates to be fiercely intelligent.
"You could tell he was, I would say, a genius," said Miss Israel. "There was something that was above the rest of us."
He'd correct people's Latin homework, when they were aged around 14, and at 16 was among the list of top students in his English class, studying "Of Mice and Men" and "Catcher In The Rye" - the classic tale of troubled youth.
"It was almost painful to have a conversation with him, because he felt so uncomfortable," said Olivia DeVivo, who sat behind him in English. "I spent so much time in my English class wondering what he was thinking."
"He didn't have any friends, but he was a nice kid if you got to know him," said Kyle Kromberg, now studying business administration at Endicott College in Massachusetts. He studied Latin with Lanza.
"He didn't fit in with the other kids," he said. "He was very, very shy. He wouldn't look you in the eyes when he talked. He didn't really want to lock eyes with you for very long."
He was also a technical whizz kid, keen on computers and video games, and part of a group who would meet up for computer programming get-togethers.
"My brother has always been a nerd," Ryan said, according to Gloria Milas, whose son was a club member along with Adam Lanza.
Catherine Urso, who was attending a vigil on Friday evening in Newtown, said her college-age son knew the killer and remembered him for his alternative style.
"He just said he was very thin, very remote and was one of the goths," she said.
The siblings certainly carved out different paths in life.
Ryan went to university; followed his father into finance; was living with friends in an attractive red-brick property in New Jersey. Indeed, when the tragedy of Friday was unfolding, one of his housemates, Jessica O'Brien, wrote on Facebook: "Do you need anything ready for when you get home? Can I set anything out for you to grab and go? Anything else I can do?"
By contrast, Adam Lanza had few friends and, as a child, went to great trouble not to mix with his fellow students at his state school. A Newtown resident also suggested he was home-schooled for some time.
"I always saw him walking alone, sitting on his own at a table or on the bus. Most of the time I saw him he was alone," said Alex Israel, who was at school with him as a young girl.
"He was really quiet. A little fidgety, uneasy. I think socially he was just going out (into the world) and not making friends with everyone."
Her mother Beth Israel, who lived nearby, said: "I know he had issues. He was a really troubled kid ... a very quiet kid, a shy kid, maybe socially awkward." He was not on Facebook, unusually for any Westerner of his generation, and did not appear in his 2010 High School Yearbook. Instead were written the words: "Camera shy".
Forty miles away from Newtown, in the well-heeled Connecticut city of Stamford, Lanza's father Peter – who was divorced from the boys' mother Nancy – was returning home on Friday afternoon. A highly-qualified academic who a year ago was appointed vice president of taxes for energy investment firm GE Energy Financial Services, Mr Lanza wound down the window on his blue Mini Cooper and asked the person outside his home how he could help her.
"I explained that I'd been told someone at his address had been linked to the shootings in Newtown," said Maggie Gordon, a reporter from the local newspaper.
"His expression twisted from patient, to surprise, to horror."
Mr Lanza had moved out in 2009, remarrying a University of Connecticut librarian in January 2011. He was said to have last seen his son Adam in June. But the painfully shy young man had taken the divorce badly.
"The kids seemed really depressed" by the break-up, said Ryan Kraft, 25, who stayed with Adam when Mrs Lanza went out.
"He would have tantrums," Mr Kraft said. "They were much more than the average kid [had]."
Mr Lanza's lawyer Gary Oberst said: "He was very upset that he was getting divorced, but he didn't want to take it out on anybody.
"He did more than he had to with the divorce. When he came in to consult with me, I said 'This is what your obligation is.' And he said: 'That's not enough. I want to do more.'"
Mr Lanza agreed to pay $240,000 (£148,400) annually to his ex-wife, and Mrs Lanza appeared to live in comfort with Adam. There was also suggestions that she was unable to work.
"She needed to be home with Adam," one family insider said.
Marsha Lanza, aunt to the boys, described Mrs Lanza as a good mother and kind-hearted. Mrs Lanza would host games of dice, or else venture out to visit her neighbours for a glass of wine. The home was immaculate; the swimming pool behind the house well maintained.
But Mrs Lanza was also, according to friends, an avid gun collector.
Dan Holmes, owner of a Connecticut landscaping firm, said Mrs Lanza once showed him a "high-end rifle" that she had purchased, adding, "She said she would often go target shooting with her kids".
The gun used to shoot Mrs Lanza was her own.
Yet, perhaps predictably, the owner of the local rifle range was defiant.
Richard Dravis, who gives shooting training at Wooster Mountain rifle range, 15 miles away from the school, said: "We don't train crazy people. I think that if we would address the mental health issue here we could possibly do something in the future. But we can't count the number of rounds in the magazine of a nut head."
His grandmother was too distraught to speak when reached by phone at her home in Florida, Associated Press reported.
"I just don't know, and I can't make a comment right now," Dorothy Hanson, 78, said in a shaky voice as she started to cry.

Quoted Text

Banning weapons will just create an underground gun market
BY FRANK J. CIERVO For The Sunday Gazette

    If anything good can be salvaged from the Dec. 14 carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary School, it would be the acts of courage and self-sacrifi ce shown by the principal, teachers and staff who moved instinctively to place themselves between the gunman’s bullets and “their” children.
    This heroism is not unique to Newtown or any place else for that matter. I have no doubt that teachers here, from Schenectady to East Greenbush and from Saratoga to Ichabod Crane, would have done the same, in an instant. This is what teachers do. So the next time you feel the need to rant about overpaid and underworked school teachers, remember Dec. 14, 2012, when you saw ordinary women asked to do the extraordinary, sacrifi cing their own lives for the sake of the band of 6- and 7-year-olds they came to love. They didn’t fl inch; answering the call without a moment’s hesitation.
    My wife taught elementary school for more than 30 years and continues to serve now as a substitute teacher. I am certain that had a similar incident occurred in her school, on her watch, today we would either be admiring her bravery, mourning her passing or both.
    But, even with incredible acts of true valor from teachers, students and first responders, 26 innocent lives were still lost. Why? What could have been done differently? And, most important, what can we do now to make sure that it never happens again?
DEBATING WHAT TO DO
    For more than a week now, we have seen journalists, psychologists, school safety gurus and a gaggle of other talking heads ramble, scold and pontificate about the failings of our mental health care system, the inadequacy of school safety measures, and the need to ban every firearm in America that isn’t owned by a law enforcement agency or the military.
    Yet, from all accounts, the enhanced school safety measures and gun laws worked exactly as they were intended to. Adam Lanza’s application for a handgun was turned down earlier that week, and the school refused him entry on that fateful day. Still, 11 days before Christmas — 28 were dead (including the shooter and his mother), two wounded, and scores more inescapably and forever scarred.
    Adam Lanza was shadowed from elementary school through his senior year in high school by counseling professionals, who understood that he was a ticking time bomb, shepherding him through the system virtually unscathed but also unhealed.
    We have an overburdened and imperfect mental health-care system. School-age children are evaluated, assessed, counseled and watched for any sign of emotional distress or mental illness throughout their first 13 years of education. Then at the magic age of 18 comes a high-school diploma in one hand and a pink slip from the mental health-care system in the other. With no mandatory counseling sessions, no safety net, and no one to monitor his behavior, in the eyes of the “system,” Lanza simply ceased to exist.
    With no requirement or inclination to participate in any (drug or counseling) therapy after high school, he inevitably disappeared from radar screens and fell through the cracks, tumbling ever downward until he landed at Sandy Hook.
SCHOOL SECURITY
    We have moved from nearly unfettered access to our schools to buzzers, video monitoring, lockdowns and lockouts. Schools have changed with the times, and safety provisions have grown exponentially. But, turning our schools into armed fortresses, with bulletproof windows and doors, and police toting semiautomatic weapons on each campus would inevitably create distrustful, ever weary, and demoralized students.
    As human beings, and especially as civilized people living in a free society, we desperately need to fi nd quick fixes. We need to identify the root of the evil at hand, address it, implement a solution and then move on, secure in the knowledge that our job is done, and in this case, that our kids are now safe and life can return to normal.
    And so, we find the lowest-hanging fruit (gun control), we pluck it from its cozy nest, and then hold it up as the great elixir that will cure the madness. We suffer from a uniquely American malady — that every problem is easily solvable if we just throw enough resources or enough money or create enough laws to regulate it or eliminate it. If only it were that simple.
    I am not an NRA apologist. I have never owned any type of fi rearm and probably never would.
    From an ownership perspective, I have no agenda and no stake in the outcome of the great debate that has raged for decades and now is about to fire up both sides anew, filling conservative and liberal alike with fresh vitriol. And so I say, ban the guns tomorrow.
    Take all the firearms you can fi nd and all the ammunition you can confiscate out of the hands of lawabiding citizens, gang members, criminals, wife beaters and madmen. Be done with it. To be sure, lives would be saved and crimes of passion and opportunity might drop signifi cantly.
ILLUSION OF SAFETY
    But, please, please, don’t imagine that you can now sleep soundly tonight secure in the knowledge that there will be no more Columbines, Virginia Techs or Sandy Hooks.
    The deadliest mass murder in a U.S. school occurred not in 1997 or 2007, but more than 85 years ago in Bath, Mich. And, the only gunshot came after 38 kids, ages 7-11, and two teachers were already dead.
    This small but growing subset of psychotics, that now adds the name Lanza to that of Harris, Klebold and Cho to its infamous list, won’t be stopped simply because you take away their obvious weapon of choice.
    How can we as rational people seriously believe that a deranged lunatic so unhinged that he is unable to feel pain, obsessed with destruction, willing to give up his own life without a moment’s hesitation in an effort to destroy as many innocents as possible, will suddenly self-heal his fractured mind and stand down simply because the means he first chose to accomplish his twisted goal is no longer legally available to him? .......................>>>>.................>>>>...........http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r02901&AppName=1

Quoted Text

Adam Lanza was shadowed from elementary school through his senior year in high school by counseling professionals, who understood that he was a ticking time bomb, shepherding him through the system virtually unscathed but also unhealed.
    We have an overburdened and imperfect mental health-care system. School-age children are evaluated, assessed, counseled and watched for any sign of emotional distress or mental illness throughout their first 13 years of education. Then at the magic age of 18 comes a high-school diploma in one hand and a pink slip from the mental health-care system in the other. With no mandatory counseling sessions, no safety net, and no one to monitor his behavior, in the eyes of the “system,” Lanza simply ceased to exist.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Quoted from bumblethru

It gets very very very interesting at the '2 minute mark'.......

another good listen........

Quoted from Box A Rox

Both of the above vids are aimed at Fear Based Americans...  

Quoted from CICERO

I think the talk of gun control coming from the left is aimed at Fear Based Americans.  Which are all from the left. Lefties want government control of EVERYTHING from health care to guns, because if they don't control it, YOU WILL DIE.  The world is a scary place for left wingers if there isn't a nanny government either spreading the wealth or modifying behavior with threats of violence.

If you are a person that just wants to be left alone - you are a potential domestic terrorist.

Quoted from Box A Rox

#4 "Liberals have more tolerance to uncertainty (bigger anterior cingulate cortex), and
conservatives have more sensitivity to fear (bigger right amygdala)."
#

http://2012election.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004818

Quoted from CICERO

Hahahahaha!  Liberals have more tolerance to uncertainty.

Liberals want more regulations on the stock market because capitalism is too unpredictiable - yeah tolerate uncertainty.  Liberals want gun control on EVERYBODY because "a gun could end up in the wrong hands" - yeah tolerate uncertainty.  Liberals want to make certain EVERYBODY to have health insurace because you never know when you will need it, if ever - yeah tolerate uncertainty.  

The liberal's whole political agenda is an attempt to legislate certainty in an uncertain world.  And they use FEAR to advance it.

Quoted from Box A Rox

As usual, Cicero's bigger right amygdala is stoking his fear of just about everything... even a message
board post!!!