Anyone shocked that the shooter's mother was a rich gun fantatic and not a teacher?

[senseandsensibility]

The average person will believe that an irresponsible public school teacher left guns around her unstable son forever. It is too late to unring that bell. But the reality is a public school teacher did not do that.

[Honeycombe8]

1. What makes you think she was rich? Even if Mom had been a teacher....

that doesn't mean that being a teacher was in any way related to the cause of why the guy did it. It wouldn't matter if she were a teacher, and it doesn't matter that she wasn't.

Her having those odd guns is no doubt related to the cause. Very odd for her to have a glock. I think most people are even more surprised because she's female.

[senseandsensibility]

3. Links all over DU about her 240,000 year alimony payment

eom

[Honeycombe8]

7. Oh, I hadn't read that. Wonder why she was working as a helper in a school?

And where is there still alimony? Most states don't have alimony....just child support.

I'll have to look that up.

[senseandsensibility]

13. Not confirmed anywhere that she had any connection with any school

of any kind. Apparently, the entire corporate media ran with an unsubstantiated rumor.

[TorchTheWitch]

25. maybe because she wanted to

Just because she's wealthy doesn't mean she wouldn't want to do something constructive that she enjoyed and was a help to the community.

Quite a number of states still have alimony, and they all should. How does one support themselves if they've been a stay at home mother/father all their life with no recent job experience? My sister desperately wants to get divorced from her mentally ill husband that is so overweight he can't get out of bed but refuses to lose weight and expects her to waite on him hand and foot when she spent her whole life raising their kids as a stay at home mother since that's what they both wanted. Unfortunately, though she has a college degree and a few years working in hospital administration over thirty years ago nobody even bothers reading her resume, and frankly she doesn't have anything to put on it for the past few decades. The only job she could likely get especially in this terrible economy is a clerk at the 7-11 or flipping burgers somewhere that couldn't possibly afford her to live and to top it off she's also over 50 years old.

If her husband was normal and had been able to continue working she should be able to divorce and go back to school or get into a job's program or gain some work experience as a temp or something for awhile until she could reasonably support herself. That's why all state's should have alimony.

It's hardly just wealthy people that can afford to be stay at home moms/dads. By the time you have to pay for daycare for two or three children unless you have a really good job it makes better financial sense for one parent to be a stay at home parent. And that was a big factor in my sister and her husband deciding she should be a stay at home mom - it was CHEAPER if she didn't work rather than pay daycare and own a second car so she could get back and forth to her job.

Alimony should be available for exactly these situations. When you've been out of the workforce for so long that nobody wants to hire you to do anything that could afford you to live without staying married how are you to support yourself if you divorce?

[Ilsa]

26. A lot of retired people find great

satisfaction in working with these young children, many of which need extra help with reading or math, or maybe just need a little extra adult attention.

[riverwalker]

8. $260,000 yearly alimony

and an ex making $900k a year.

[WinkyDink]

38. Did you not see her house?

http://www.capitalbay.com/latest-news/282135-sandy-hook-elementary-school-shooting-adam-lanza-went-from-honor-student-to-goth-killer.html

[sufrommich]

2. They showed her massive house in a tony

neighborhood too. So much for that whole "we need better access to mental health care in this country" argument. It certainly looked liked it would have been affordable to her.

[Brickbat]

6. "Better access" doesn't necessarily mean "more affordable."

It's tied in with stigma, early intervention, treating symptoms vs. the problem itself, the cycle of violence that can trigger depression and hit vulnerable minds harder than others, and so on.

[wickerwoman]

18. Also the rights of adult mentally-ill people

to resist treatment and medication.

Bill Gates couldn't legally force his mentally ill child to seek or accept treatment with the current laws we have.

Not saying that those rights should be overturned. It's a complex issue. But one that we clearly need to keep examining.

[Brickbat]

22. Exactly. There are no easy answers, but if people don't want to talk about gun control, they'd do

well talking about mental health, violence prevention, masculinity in our culture and the cycle of violence.

[Ilsa]

27. Well said. A Major Issue, probably applies here. nt

[Throckmorton]

44. Not true in Connecticut, but you must pursue it in court, real hard,

My soon to be, 18 year old son is under a Superior Court order to accept medical treatment for his mental illness, and cannot stop treatment on his own, as he was declared Non compos mentis in August . He is committed to Connecticut's Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. He has a conservator of the person, and another for Education. I live in Connecticut and started this process when he turned 17, because we saw it coming. He is a schizophrenic and lives at a care facility, and attends High School there as well.

It cost me a lot of money to make this happen, but it needed to be done.
Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

[Bicoastal]

4. Jesus. The shooter's DEAD mother, you mean? Shot by her own flesh and blood?

Let's stop blaming a victim here. The killer was an adult; unstable or not, he was sensible enough to strap on a vest and load four guns and commit premeditated murder. He and he alone is ultimately responsible.

And by the way, who the fuck cares how rich she is or what she did for a living? She's DEAD.

[senseandsensibility]

9. Facts matter.

I had a hysterical parent approach me yesterday in tears because a teacher's son did this. To her, this makes schools a more scary place and her own children more vulnerable. The media did an APPALLING job reporting this aspect of the story and they deserve to be called out.

[Bicoastal]

16. No, BLAME matters. You're angry and you're looking for individuals to blame.

When it comes right down to it, none of these spree killers had very much in common. Some came from rich families, some poor. Some got their guns from their parents, some legally purchased them as adults. Some had racist or revenge motives and some were flat out insane.

It's the big picture we should be looking at. There are all sorts of mothers and fathers all over the world, but ours is the only country that keeps having large-scale incidents like this one. We have a GUN problem on our hands--not a parent problem.

[senseandsensibility]

17. Facts matter.

A public school teacher did not leave guns around her unstable son. I will point that out, and you can characterize it any way you want.

[Bicoastal]

23. "You can characterize it any way you want."

Why should I, when you're doing such a bang-up job of it already? I mean, you've already established that the horrible dead woman was a super-rich gun-nut to your own satisfaction.

[senseandsensibility]

29. Facts are really not your strong point, are they?

"Horrible" and "nut" are your words, not mine. Don't misquote me. I was very careful to write exactly what I meant. The record speaks for itself. You are reading things into my post, and I am not responsible for your fantasies. I'm done responding to you, but since you fancy yourself a mindreader, I am sure you will continue to pontificate and fabricate what I really meant. Have at it, but the record is right here for all to read.

[CokeMachine]

40. What's the difference between

calling someone a rich gun fanatic and a rich gun nut?

[Coyotl]

30. Exactly. The facts really do matter.

Thje facts in many ways led to this moment, so they really really matter.

[bettyellen]

33. your friend is ignorant, call her out too. anyone could be the mom of a sick murderer.

[etherealtruth]

36. Sadly, true

[Comrade_McKenzie]

10. Bought and trained son to use the weapons that killed her...

You get out of life what you put into it sometimes.

[alcibiades_mystery]

12. The shooter was a twenty year old who lived at home and was not enrolled in college

and had no job.

The term "adult" is very loose in this context. At the very least, the victim here had some understanding that her child was not well, one would think, making her insistence on accumulating the kind of firepower that she had at that residence deeply irresponsible.

[marlakay]

32. The very least would be locked up

where he couldn't get in no matter what and no keys near by.

[malaise]

15. SHe's the one who took him to the range to shoot

from he was young - guns were her obsession.
And she was rich - living in an upscale neighborhood. She was not a school teacher.
We need the truth here.

[kestrel91316]

24. If she was the legal owner of those guns then she had a personal responsibility to

ensure they were not available for any Tom, Dick, Harry, or Adam to come along and use them to murder.

She was negligent. She failed to keep them locked away safely. She bears some responsibility (and I doubt this is the case) unless she locked them up and he broke into something to steal them.

[Ilsa]

28. In some cases, I suspect "locking them up"

isn't good enough to protect other citizens. Getting rid of owned guns might be the only way to reasonably keep them out of the hands of someone who's lost it.

[senseandsensibility]

11. Agreed.

I am very suspicious of this reporting. I have no expectations of corporate journalists, heavens knows, but this stinks.

[slackmaster]

14. The average person has one testicle and one enlarged, dollopy breast

I'm not into the whole blame-the-victim thing.

[etherealtruth]

19. I haven't heard any of the speculation r/t

"irresponsible public school teacher left guns around her unstable son"

The speculation seemed to be a way to explain why the murderer went to the school ...

[Odin2005]

20. I am not at all suprised that she was a gun nut.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

21. This tragedy is going to challenge many of the false

Last edited Sat Dec 15, 2012, 08:34 PM - Edit history (1)

beliefs we hold about who owns and actually enjoys these types of weapons.
What mass murderers, their families are suppose to look and act like. And very
important, the communities we erroneously expect them to live in.

[bettyellen]

34. spree, not serial killer. very different things.

[allrevvedup]

31. Not particularly.

This thing has had a very funny smell since it started and the "perp" has the profile of a classic patsy. But that way madness lies, so I'll simply point out that the effect of mass shootings on weaponry sales is to push them ever upward, meaning there's no downside to the gun'n'ammo trade no matter who says what:

Why gun sales spike after mass shootings: It's not what you might think

After the Colorado shooting, gun sales have risen around the country. For some, it's because they want to buy a gun for self-protection. But there's a bigger reason, gun-shop owners say.

By Linda Feldmann | The Christian Science Monitor | July 25, 2012

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2012/0725/Why-gun-sales-spike-after-mass-shootings-It-s-not-what-you-might-think

The "bigger reason" mentioned in the headline is this:

"Normally what happens - and I've been doing this for 30 years – is whenever they start talking about gun control on the news and they start pushing that, people have a tendency to think they're going to take away their right to buy the gun, and that usually spurs sales,” says Paul Decker, owner of Hunters Heaven in Hayes, Va.

Just in time for last minute holiday shopping, too, with time to spare for shipping. Thoughtful.

[WinkyDink]

39. Not a patsy.

[allrevvedup]

42. So far we don't have a motive

or any evidence to suggest AL was the actual shooter. Whoever it was seemed to know exactly what he was doing before conveniently executing himself so we don't have to fuss with a trial.

Trials can be so inconvenient.

[dawnie51]

35. reality comes slowly...

Almost every "fact" that was reported on Friday has been debunked by now; the father was killed (no), the mother was a teacher {no}, Ryan did it {no}, amount of and kinds of guns, mother killed at school, {no}, etc. etc. I wish the damned news had just not said anything until the facts were actually facts; now there's so much misinformation out there, most people will never learn the truth. And no, sadly, I am not surprised to find out that this woman was a rich gun fanatic. It makes perfect sense.

[jsr]

37. Is this the whole family

Peter Lanza

Nancy Lanza

Ryan Lanza

Adam Lanza

[OldDem2012]

41. Was she really a "gun fanatic" or were they left behind when her ex-husband left the house?....

...Do we know those guns were bought by her or buy her former husband during their previous life together?

We're getting so much conflicting information from the media that it's hard to know what's fact and what's not.

But, we do know at this point she was never a public school teacher unless it was on a part-time basis.

[truth2power]

43. Where does it say she was not a teacher and/or was not the teacher of that kindergarten class?..

Sorry, I've been out all day and just came home about an hour ago. Thanks.

[allrevvedup]

45. No connection at all.

Article from this morning:

A law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity said investigators believe Lanza attended the school several years ago but appeared to have no recent connection to it.

At least one parent said Lanza's mother was a substitute teacher there. But her name did not appear on a staff list. And the official said investigators were unable to establish any connection so far between her and the school.

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/12/14/3965786/school-shooting-reported-in-newtown.html#storylink=cpy

A second grade teacher interviewed on NPR yesterday also said she had no knowledge of the name or person.

[truth2power]

46. Thanks. n/t