How Much Did This Really Help? More Newtown Facts




Now that more information about Adam Lanza and the Newtown massacre are about to hit the airwaves, how much do we really need to know? Make that, want to know.

That he fired 155 bullets in less than five minutes, according to NBC News?  That he fired 154 of those bullets from his assault rifle and just one (to kill himself) from a handgun?

And big surprise, that he had a certificate from, or was a member of, the National Rifle Association?  All these facts came out today at a press conference held by the chief prosecutor investigating the slaughter.

So, does this make any of us feel better?  We sort of knew the main outline from all the newscasts.  This is just shedding a little more light (if there is any light to Adam Lanza).  We also learned just last week that he had a seven-foot spreadsheet of all the mass killings of recent years.

But does this help us make any more sense of this horrific crime?  Not for me.  We always knew this kid was really messed-up, and I'm not sure it makes one bit of difference to the general public -- or those tragic parents -- what was in his head.

We all want to make sense of tragedies.  That's a given.  When I was diagnosed with breast cancer nine years ago, then had it recur two years later, I went through everything I ate and drank and breathed (and finally came up with the meds I took to have my son).  But did it make any difference in the end?  Of course not.  I still had to have major surgery, radiation and additional biopsies.  I still had cancer.  But it just made me think I'd feel better if I knew. Let's be real here. That if I did, I could somehow control it.

Because that's what we're looking for, when a sin of this magnitude, or any tragedy, happens.  We all want to find the reason.  But there's no reason 20 children and six adults are dead when all they were doing was sitting in a classroom -- in a different life, one of the safest places to be on earth.

I know, for me, I wish I'd tried to have children earlier.  Maybe that might have made a difference in my getting cancer.  Or that I'd had more, rather than just one.  But what's so frightening to me is not so much what happened, but what may happen in the future.  Will I get it again?

I believe that's what might scare us about Adam Lanza the most.  How many others like him are out there, and free to obtain a gun, or an assault weapon, under our current laws -- which don't look like, in spite of this unspeakable tragedy, they are going to change?

To me, that's the greatest tragedy of all.




















http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/28/17501282-newtown-gunman-adam-lanza-fired-155-bullets-in-less-than-five-minutes-prosecutor-says?lite



http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/how-to-use-the-brain-to-predict-if-convicts-will-return-to-their-old-ways/15937?tag=search-river

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