The police report details are getting out.
Even though friends and family thought something was "shutting down with him" -- the Newtown Shooter had been acquiring dangerous new 'role models' -- that should make any responsible gun-own shudder in horror.
One piece of paper seized from the home is particularly chilling in hindsight: a 2008 New York Times clipping about a shooting at Northern Illinois University, where a gunman murdered five people, wounded another 21 and then killed himself.
Although it's not spelled out in the warrants, a law-enforcement source told NBC News that police also found a spreadsheet that Lanza toiled over, cataloging the details of mass murders through the years.
Combine that
morbid hobby, with an apparent obsession for military-style gaming ...
The witness considered Lanza to be a "shut-in and an avid gamer who plays 'Call of Duty,' amongst other games," according to a law-enforcement affidavit accompanying the warrants.
and you've got a formula for a human disaster. Especially if something happens to light some deep-seated fuse for
revenge and notoriety. Something perhaps, like a parental lecture "to get off the couch ...
and go do something with their life" ... (? pure conjecturing here, since
exactly WHAT lit the fuse -- we probably will never know.)
What investigators found was a chilling spreadsheet 7 feet long and 4 feet wide that required a special printer, a document that contained Lanza’s obsessive, extensive research -- in nine-point font -- about mass murders of the past, and even attempted murders.
Sadly and tragically, what happens in a Video Game -- when its lessons are transferred to real life -- the real-life version cannot be so easily "undone." When it comes to the human toll that guns can take, in the hands of a Faux Commando -- Life rarely has a quick and easy "re-do" button.
[...]
A Connecticut state police spokesman dismissed the [CBS] report as inaccurate speculation.
Adam Lanza, 20, who killed himself as police closed in on him at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on Dec. 14, saw himself in direct competition with Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in a bombing and shooting attack in Norway on July 22, 2011, CBS said. Breivik surrendered to police.
Citing two officials briefed on the Newtown investigation, CBS said Lanza targeted the elementary school because he saw it as the "easiest target" with the "largest cluster of people."
The report did not say how the investigators learned of Lanza's desire to compete with Breivik.
He [a tough career cop] didn’t use Lanza’s name, saying he did not want to give him even an hour more of fame, just because that is what Lanza wanted; what all these shooters want, from Tucson to Newtown to Virginia Tech.
“We keep calling them mass murderers,” the veteran cop to whom I spoke said. “But there should be a new way of referring to them: Glory killers.
Kudos to that cop for trying to put a lid on the Newtown shooter's
fifteen minutes of fame ...
or rather infamy, when there is such a blatant disregard trampling of the innocent lives.
No one emerges victorious in this kind of 'High Score' victimization game.
These evermore frequent "Glory Killer" attempts at achieving personal fame and revenge, are willfully and wantonly inflicting pain and anguish on our society's fabric. Because the body counts they automatically rack up (154 rounds in 5 minutes), in their ill-conceived game -- on society's streets are very, very REAL.
12/15/2012
[...]
The following is a list (as released by police) of the victims in Friday's shooting spree on the campus of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.
-- Charlotte Bacon, 2/22/06, female
-- Daniel Barden, 9/25/05, male
-- Rachel Davino, 7/17/83, female.
-- Olivia Engel, 7/18/06, female
-- Josephine Gay, 12/11/05, female
-- Ana M. Marquez-Greene, 04/04/06, female
-- Dylan Hockley, 3/8/06, male
-- Dawn Hochsprung, 06/28/65, female
-- Madeleine F. Hsu, 7/10/06, female
-- Catherine V. Hubbard, 6/08/06, female
-- Chase Kowalski, 10/31/05, male
-- Jesse Lewis, 6/30/06, male
-- James Mattioli, 3/22/06, male
-- Grace McDonnell, 12/04/05, female
-- Anne Marie Murphy, 07/25/60, female
-- Emilie Parker, 5/12/06, female
-- Jack Pinto, 5/06/06, male
-- Noah Pozner, 11/20/06, male
-- Caroline Previdi, 9/07/06, female
-- Jessica Rekos, 5/10/06, female
-- Avielle Richman, 10/17/06, female
-- Lauren Rousseau, 6/1982, female (full date of birth not specified)
-- Mary Sherlach, 2/11/56, female
-- Victoria Soto, 11/04/85, female
-- Benjamin Wheeler, 9/12/06, male
-- Allison N. Wyatt, 7/03/06, female
Such victims of seemingly random gun violence -- never, ever,
EVER deserve the horrific fate, that has been
cruelly chosen for them.
May we remember their names and once-vibrant lives, much longer than the name of the latest over-the-top gunman -- whatever the shooter's personal, internal battles, might have been. When they take the lives of innocents, they forfeit any claims to our sympathy. (Or to our media obsession with "Exactly WHAT made this shooter tick ... ?)
And those who dare to lead and legislate our "societal norms" must realize at some point -- that what they do, has impacts; that the Lives their rhetoric will touch -- are NOT some kind of game.
Out here in the Real World, on the mean streets, and in malls, movie theaters, and schools -- we have No Reset Button.
It is just simply and harshly: Game Over! ... Each new time that "armed and dangerous" fuse gets lit.