Curbing Gun Violence Without Eviscerating Second Amendment Rights

It has been one year since the devastating shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School destroyed the lives of 27 people, including 20 children, and shocked the collective conscience of the American people. The Newtown, Connecticut massacre has stirred gun control debate across the country and spurred a new wave of advocates in favor of further curtailing Second Amendment rights in order to better avoid the kind of violence that has been brought to bear by way of semi-automatic firearms. While a wholesale ban on semi-automatic assault rifles would achieve some progress in this regard, it is impractical to expect such a ban to materialize. In lieu of such legislation, the nation would be wise to consider that lenient mental health laws have allowed for such weapons to find their way into the hands of those who should not have access to them. In this regard, the Newtown incident and its perpetrator, Adam Lanza, provide an instructive case study.

Though it took nearly a full year for the Attorney General’s report to be released, the Sandy Hook incident offers us a glimpse into how what is realistically a “mental hygiene” issue can be appropriated as a “gun control” problem. In conflating or confusing these two distinct concepts, the American public-at-large risks further exposure to incidents of the kind that took place in Newtown. While Adam Lanza was surely armed and dangerous on the day of the shooting in question, it was the manner in which his mental health was treated (or untreated) that allowed for his gruesome crimes. Indeed, we now know that Lanza’s mother catered to his every whim, thereby exacerbating the effects of his debilitating mental condition (Drinka). Lanza refused to allow his mother access to his bedroom, despite that he lived in her house. Lanza’s mother tolerated this prohibition, despite that one glance into her son’s room would have revealed Lanza’s sick fascination with mass killings, in addition to further indications of his desperately volatile mental state.

In addition to tolerating her son’s rules against her gaining access to his room—rules that implicate Nancy Lanza’s sanity in that she adhered to them despite their being antithetical to even the most rudimentary of parenting guidelines—Nancy Lanza also enabled her son’s conduct by providing for his every destructive need, including a check found in his room for the purchase of a high-powered rifle (Fullere & Fuller). Indeed, Adam Lanza lives a life that consisted exclusively of killing, whether in virtual form with regard to his video games or as represented by that which he spent his time collecting: newspaper clippings of each and every mass-shooting or killing spree that has occurred over the past several years (Ibid.). Shut out from Lanza’s life was anything relating to light, in a literal sense—with black garbage bags shuttering his bedroom from daylight, Lanza created for himself a world in which killing and the tools of its trade were not merely central, but exclusive of any other material or sentimental element.

As such, while Adam Lanza most certainly perpetrated his crimes through several high-octane firearms, he might never have conceived of such crimes had he been compelled to take his medication, which he refused to do (Bates & Pow). Indeed, the manner in which Lanza committed these crimes is indicative not of someone who has illustrated the importance of increased gun control, but of someone who has demonstrated the depths of the human soul’s potential for depravity. In the Danbury Attorney General’s report, we are provided with a sickening depiction of precisely how Lanza disposed of his victims—he lined up the 20 children along a single wall and then executed them, one-by-one, though not merely in the style of the summary execution of the kind Lanza ostensibly sought to mimic. In fact, these children’s’ bodies were riddled with bullet-holes to such an extent as to render them unidentifiable to their own parents.

As described above, Adam Lanza was surely a gun enthusiast who committed gruesome crimes with guns. The same can be said of the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooter, James Holmes, Virginia Tech shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, and, of course, the Columbine High School shooters, with whom Lanza was reportedly obsessed (Lopez). All of these men and boys, who surely used the means of guns to achieve terrible ends, had one other human characteristic in common; namely, that their respective mental disabilities rendered them less than human (Somaiya). In other words, Adam Lanza would have killed without access to guns, eventually. Whether he would have murdered 20 children in an execution-style mass-killing is an unanswerable question. What we know factually is that guns merely enabled Adam Lanza to commit his violent crimes. They were not, however, the cause of these crimes, or even the sole vehicle by which he might have committed them. In any event, it is unlikely that Lanza would ever have conceived of them had he been properly attended to by a mental health professional (Ingold).

A simple increase in the enforcement of mental hygiene laws, in addition to a focus on more seriously attending to mental illness, would do a great deal to limit the violent, human cost of our Second Amendment rights. To this end, lowered standards of involuntary commitment might have allowed for a single credible citizen’s report to finding the indefinite commitment of Adam Lanza to an in-patient psychiatric facility, where he would not have been granted access to guns. With such lowered standards, gun violence can be prevented without so much as infringing on a single American citizen’s Second Amendment rights.

Works Cited

Bates, Daniel, and Pow, Heather. “Adam Lanza's Father is a 'Broken Man' Wracked by Guilt Since Sandy Hook Massacre: Family Reveals What it's Like to Live With One of the Most Hated Names in America.” DailyMail.uk.com. The Daily Mail. 29 Nov. 2013. Web. 29 Nov. 2013.

Drinka, George. “When the Media is the Parent.” Psychologytoday.com. Psychology Today. 7 Mar. 2013. Web. 28 Nov. 2013.

Fuller, T.E. and Fuller, Doris A.. “The Potential Killers We Let Loose.” Wsj.com. The Wall Street Journal. 18 Dec. 2012. Web. 27 Nov. 2013.

Ingold, John. “James Holmes’ Lawyers Argue That He is Too Mentally Ill to Be Executed.” Denverpost.com. The Denver Post. 15 Nov. 2013. Web. 27 Nov. 2013

Lopez, Ralph. “Sandy Hook Final Report: 'Privacy Laws' Limit Psychiatric Answers.” Digitaljournal.com The Digital Journal. 26 Nov. 2013. Web. 27 Nov. 2013.

Somaiya, Ravi. “Virginia Tech Held Not Negligent in ’07 Killings.” NYTimes.com. The New York Times. 31 Oct. 2013. Web. 27 Nov. 2013.