One of the painful anomalies in the state's official report about December's school massacre in Newtown, Conn., is the evidence that while Adam Lanza, the shooter who murdered 20 children and six adults, was the object of his mother's great and continuing concern, it did not stop her from writing a check so he might obtain his own pistol in a family already well stocked with firearms.
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Mr. Lanza, a disturbed and lonely 20-year-old, had five weapons, legally obtained by his mother, Nancy, over the years, according to the state report released Monday. The report noted, in meticulous detail, every recovered bullet shell and precise turning point in the shooting spree. Narrowly forensic and carefully written to spare the victims' families greater pain, it concluded that Mr. Lanza had long been obsessed with stories of mass murders and school shootings and acted alone in a raid that he had planned in advance.
The report touches on other aspects of the tragedy, including autopsy results, the police response and the brave resistance of many school officials. It offers no judgment on how heavily the shooter's easy access to firearms weighed in the tragedy. Left unanswered were questions beyond answer: what set him off on such a course and whether his actions could have been headed off years earlier as symptoms showed him to be "undoubtedly afflicted with mental health problems."
The report confirms that Ms. Lanza was murdered in her bed by her son before he set off for Sandy Hook Elementary School. For the three previous months, she had not been able to talk to her son, who was friendless and stayed in his room, sending her emails. Before that he had been obsessed with his computer and video games, including one that happily guides a player on dance-step movements and another entitled "School Shooting" in which a player controls a character who enters a school and shoots at students.
The scant information about Mr. Lanza can only be the darkest footnote to the larger tragedy of the young children and school officials he murdered in their classrooms. The fact that he was a silent, dangerous and suffering individual waiting to leave his mark on Newtown was known to too few people, if any.
The report on his crimes can only haunt the community and present the nation with difficult questions — far from adequately answered — about how to head off the next gun tragedy.
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