Another major school shooting today ... Newtown, Conn

I also agree that Huffington Post is pretty reliable.

It's not blather, it's the truth. Bad parenting can't be defined to an accurate degree as the context matters. Obviously Adam's Mom taking him to the range to teach him how to use guns, to 'educate' her obviously troubled son is bad parenting at its best. A good parent's logic is if you have a child with violent behavioral tendencies, secure your guns away from that child, no matter how old he is. It's that simple.
Damn, if the solution to fix the nationwide bad parenting problems was a textbook answer, all born babies sent home from the hospital would come with a manual.

I know what I am about to write is neither nice nor will it be popular.
I remember stories where children in the 50's and 60's who were somehow mentally, developmentally, or physically disabled were at one time automatically institutionalized. Parents were given assistance (even if it was in the form of state-run institutions) when children showed obvious signs of not being like everyone else. I'm fairly certain that ACLU had something to do w/closing the state-run institutions, though I don't know that for a fact.

In cases such as these, it would be better if Adam's mom institutionalized him at a young age instead of home school him.
There was a time, when if your child exhibited such behaviors they were removed from society, not just for our protection but for their own. If you have a child that is violent and does not respond to normal parenting, why are they still at home in our society? They are dangerous. They are going to hurt others, they are going to hurt themselves. Perhaps it is time that parents take themselves out of the equation and stop doing what is easiest for themselves and do what is best for the disturbed individual and society at large.

The problem at hand however is that parents has to pay for it. The parents don't want to, and expect the government to foot the bill; now a law helping poor parents to foot the bill would be a more effective way to prevent such tragedies from happening in our society.

There has been nothing reliably reported in any reports I've seen that the killer at any point prior to the tragedies HAD publicly or privately exhibited violent behavior.

Can you provide such a reference?

I'm not sure that will likely be known, but as a mother, who almost spends a good amount of time with her son, would definitely see it.
This incident happened five day ago, give it time to develop, and we may possibly know.

Huh?

That is a non-answer!

On of the people who really knew if he did or did not have dangerously aggressive or violent tendency in a private setting was shot by her own son, so there...

oh, that was so much better!

Again what I asked was: at any point prior to the tragedies HAD the killer publicly or privately exhibited violent behavior?

Can you provide such a reference?

I'll get back to you on that.

You,

FYI, "truth" needs some basis of knowledge that can be defined. You offer nothing, but blather.

Of course "context matters." That's the reason why your use of "bad parent" can't be identified that easily. That you can judge others of being a "bad parent" doesn't hold water or logic. Don't use statements that suggest someone is bad parent unless you have evidence of it.

You wrote,

You're suggesting something nobody else is aware of. Why are you even suggesting such a thing about a dead parent?

Translation: I don't know but I think talking gibberish is a hoot.

I wasn't referring to speculation about that issue just in this thread, or referring to any particular link or post. And I believe that issue's been brought up by more than one poster in this thread--I seem to remember Hawkeye mentioning it.
So I was referring to general speculation about Adam's mother trying to have him committed.

The speculation regarding possible commitment is all over the internet. I just read it repeated, in an off-hand way, in a NY Times opinion column.

None of the speculation regarding plans to commit him seems to come from a reliable source--that's why I think it's all speculation. In the link you've just posted, the alleged friend says...


This person is repeating second hand information. Well, who told him that? Where and when did he hear it? Who was it that Adam actually revealed the information to--and why isn't that person giving a first-hand account?


I'm doubting that Adam had any friends that he actually talked to or confided in. He was socially withdrawn and not very verbal, according to people who were actually in class with him in both high school and college, and there are no indications that he had any life outside of his home, or any outside social contacts, since he attended college classes a couple of years ago. So how would anyone outside the home know how he felt about anything? Who are the people his mother supposedly directly confided her feelings to? Or talked to about her son's recent mental and emotional state?

I don't know that the person who said that to the reporter was deliberately creating a falsehood, I think he was probably repeating a rumor he heard.

In that same article you linked to, in an update, an "unidentified friend" says his mother wasn't planning to commit him, but he had been withdrawing from her so she took him to a psychiatrist. So that contradicts what the other person had said.

And it doesn't sound like Adam was legally incompetent, he wasn't that cognitively or intellectually impaired, so I really am inclined not to believe the additional speculation that his mother was trying to get guardianship over him so she could manage his affairs. And guardianship wouldn't affect her ability to get him committed--that decision can only be made by a psychiatrist and it would have to be based on whether he was an imminent danger to himself or others.

If something is "imminent"--like possible dangerousness-- you don't go through a whole lengthy legal process of seeking guardianship--you try to get the person to an ER, or call in a private psychiatrist to evaluate him, or call the police if he's acting-out in the home etc.--you try to do something more immediate to have him hospitalized. But his mother couldn't have had him committed, that decision can only be made by a psychiatrist, and it's got to be made on the basis of an evaluation that reveals him to be a possible immediate danger to self or others. She couldn't have him "committed" just to get treatment--he'd either have to be a voluntary patient, and go into a hospital willingly, or an involuntary patient because he was possibly dangerous--but, in no case would the decision be under the mother's control.

If Nancy Lanza wanted to have her son committed, would she have gone away for 2 1/2 days last week, leaving him home alone--with all the guns? If you think someone needs to be committed for psych treatment, because they pose a possible danger to self or others, you just don't do that.

None of this business about commitment or guardianship sounds at all plausible to me. I think it's all unfounded speculation.

And, in another article I read, another acquaintance of the mother said she had found a wonderful school for him in Washington state and the two of them were planning on moving there. So, that's still another version of what was going on.

Do I doubt the journalistic integrity of the people reporting this stuff? I don't know about integrity, but I'm seeing a lot of sloppy journalism, in most articles I read about this mother and son, where reporters aren't sufficiently establishing the reliability of their sources, or the recency of the information--they just are repeating whatever these people tell them. This small town is teeming with media and they are falling all over everyone who seems to have any scrap of information, without sufficiently questioning the reliability or validity of what they are being told, mainly by sources who were not really recent close friends of either Nancy or Adam Lanza. And that's one reason so much conflicting information is being reported.

So I'm more than slightly skeptical about most of the information I'm reading and hearing on TV--unless it's clearly coming from someone very credible, and I haven't come across too many people who seem to have recent credible information. Some of these people might just want to see their names in print, or get to be on TV, or simply want the experience of talking to a reporter in order to feel like a part of all the media hubbub in that town, but they really have no first hand recent information that sheds real light on what was going on with Adam or Nancy in the days and weeks before the shooting.

I don't know that anyone really knows what her homelife had been like recently--or, if they do, they're the ones not talking to reporters.

The police are going through everything in the home, including letters, documents--everything--but they don't want to discuss any of it yet. Perhaps that will uncover something that will better reveal what Adam's mental state was like prior to the shooting, and how his mother was dealing with it.

This link is from a general article about the Lanza family. You might find it interesting. No great revelations, but I found it interesting.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/for-lanza-family-son-adams-difficulties-dominated/2012/12/17/3c0e8eb0-4890-11e2-ad54-580638ede391_story.html

You are so obsessed by your fancy dancy pistol grip accessory that you don't seem to be aware that it is attached to a gun...

I know I am not one to talk but something about you does not seem to click (no pun intended)...

Um, RexRed, let me make a wild guess here. You've never been on a military base, have you? You are simply not surrounded by people with guns. Really, excluding military police and infantrymen in actual training exercises, I can't think of a single place where you are likely to see fewer guns.

Honest!

truth, except that there are a lot of people with guns at the gates. the inside of a military base is extraordinarily crime free so mp's with weapons are almost never seen except at the food vendors as they grab a meal. almost all of the training takes place at the ranges and training areas, which are far from where people are on purpose.

That still does not address the question would the military base be an safer with more soldiers armed? Highly unlikely...

i speculated that this was a dispute between mom and son over his treatment, that once he turned 18 and she could not legally decide for him anymore he started to make choices which she deeply disapproved of. she had made almost her whole life about him and his problems, his newfound ability to ignore her desires probably increasingly made her desperate.

who cares, we know that military bases are about the safest place to be in america even though they are massively populated with some of our best trained and most practiced killers.


you look like a babbling idiot again......

RTA--

If an assault weapon ban, at least, is not forthcoming and Mr Obama's speech at the Memorial Service caused a surge in gun and ammo sales it follows that what he said there, and since, is just what the doctor ordered from the gun manufacturers and dealers point of view.

It isn't as if he wouldn't know the effect on gun and ammo sales of what he said. There is no question of unintended consequences.

The result of the speech was to increase the number of weapons in circulation.

He needs a ban to avoid being accused of being the best weapons salesman in history. And for a second time because there was a surge in sales prior to his first election win.

Furthermore, the Constitution prohibits depriving citizens of their property without "due process".