Letter 2 America for February 19, 2013

Dear America,

In that the nation is still immersed in the debate over gun control in the wake of the Newtown massacre, the appearance in the Hartford newspaper on Sunday of a description of the Lanza family was a matter that probably still interests us all.  It is the portrait of a family that is not far out of the mainstream, but in which there appears to have been something latently ominous.  It is probably the case that there is something latently ominous about every family until something profound happens and it is no longer latent, but such is certainly the case with the Lanza family.  There will be something related to the newspaper article on "Frontline," the PBS program that delves into such things, and thus there is no need to recapitulate the article in the Hartford Courant here, but I would be surprised if that ominous thing is not apparent to others when they see it.  Actually, it is not one thing, but a conflation in one family of a series of things: money, divorce, a divorcee who seemed quite involved in a social life that took her off on her own fairly frequently, a child with affective and/or cognitive problems, a lack of judgment on the part of the parents and perhaps most importantly, guns.  It wasn't that the parents of Adam Lanza are or were bad people that precipitated Adam's rampage...at least as far as anyone can see at this point.  Nor was it that there were guns in the house, because there are guns in at least half the houses in this country.  But the admixture of the fuel for the Newtown murders and the person capable of committing them was something that I believe would have been apparent to anyone exposed to them, especially Adam's mother, Nancy, and ironically, it was here insouciant obliviousness to this dangerous mixture of ingredients that cost not only the lives of twenty children and six other adults, it cost her own life as well, and that of her son, whom she professed to love.  And all of that together is the reason why we need gun control.  As individuals, we are not always capable of seeing the forest for the trees, so the government has to see to it.

Here are a few of the things that Lanza's father and mother ignored, or even facilitated, that should never have been allowed to come together.  Adam was afflicted with some condition or constellation of symptoms that were within the range of those characterizing autism.  At one point it was apparently diagnosed as Asberger's syndrome, but there was another component to his condition that made him averse to being touched, among other things.  That aversion extended even to his mother's touch, and in consequence, he was withdrawn even from her, apparently to her sorrow.  And he apparently was addicted not just to video games, but to the most violent of them, at least he was by the time he committed mass murder.  The police found in the game room at his home thousands of dollars worth of such games, all maintained in a basement game room in which Adam was permitted to spend hours, and even days unsupervised.  His mother, a middle aged divorcee wanted to enjoy her life, and in furtherance of that understandable desire, she spent days away from home leaving Adam by himself with no sign of parental supervision other than prepared meals left for him in the refrigerator while his mother went off to Boston to watch the Red Sox or see shows, stay in the best hotels and eat at the finest restaurants, all of which she could afford given the more than twenty thousand dollars a month that she received from her former husband.  And then there were the guns.  She kept a few in the house, including at least one hand gun and of course, the infamous assault rifle, all apparently purchased after her she and her husband became estranged, but it appears that he had an interest in guns as well, and the family, which includes Adam's older brother, used to shoot as a family activity before the divorce.

So, we have parents who were interested in guns and shooting, and a child who was not interested in much else as far as anyone could tell, except technology...computers and such...which probably made him even more isolated than his psychology by itself would have.  We know now that all these things together were a lethal combination, but the question begged by that fact is, what could have and should have been done about it.  What could have been done to prevent the explosion of violence that ultimately resulted.  The "could-have" part of the question is irresolvable.  Registration of those guns wouldn't have kept them out of Adam Lanza's hands absent other measures.  And even if the assault rifle had been against the law, there were other weapons that an assassin as determined as Adam Lanza appears to have been would have let suffice, and no one is even mentioning the possibility of banning guns in toto, or even hand guns specifically.  Since Adam never showed signs of violent potential until he committed his crimes, the grounds for his involuntary commitment weren't even present, and prior restraint of any kind is as un-American as national humility.  So the could-have question is an open one, though the answer to it is probably that you do all those things--ban guns of some kinds, ban large magazines, require registration, require some form of education for all those who insist on owning and possessing guns, regulate video games, or at least label them more graphically and more--but the "should-have" question remains.  That one, I believe is easier to answer.

All those things we could have done, we should have done, and especially the education part.  If  Lanza's parents had been forced to confront the fact that, while their son wasn't inevitably violent, the potential was there, they might have thought better of the choices they let him make with regard to the ways in which he was allowed to entertain himself, and about the decisions they made, such as exposing him to lethal weapons of any kind.  Then there is the mental health issue.  Should we, as a society, allow people as impaired as Adam Lanza seems to have been to wander about without making some kind of organized effort to help them cope with, and adapt to, a world that to them may well seem a chaotic and hostile environment to them.  We make more of an effort to get the homeless off the street on cold nights than we seem to have made in Adam Lanza's case even though he was right in our midst for his entire life wearing his neuroses on his sleeve until they became psychosis and murder.  I think there is a tendency to look at such people and conclude that they are just too much trouble to deal with, too much money and personal investment to do otherwise, at which point we tend to then shut them out and walk away from them.  The problem is that in doing so, we invite the kind of trouble, both for them and for the rest of us, that Newtown now represents.  But this isn't a matter of how much it will cost, either in terms of dollars or effort.  It is a matter of survival...at any cost.

Your friend,

Mike