There has been a journalistic breakthrough in the Sandy Hook
Elementary School mass murder case.
It’s always a hopeful sign when journalists rub the sleepy
seeds from their eyes and wake up.
Some in Connecticut appear to have been aroused by a story
that first appeared in the New York Daily News – significantly NOT in any
Connecticut media watering hole. A few days ago, Rick Green of the Hartford
Courant speculated on his blog, “Maybe
the state police owe us some official details about what happened — before we
change laws and spend a lot of the public’s money.” In the future, after all the
legislation affecting legal gun ownership has been rolled out, signed, sealed
and delivered, the question foremost in everyone’s mind will be, “What didn’t
they know and why didn’t’ they know it.”
“Everyone” would
include: the news community; the two governmental panels assigned, one by the
governor and another by the General Assembly, to bring home the data on the basis
of which legislators might produce a bill preventing future mass murders of
mothers, school children and teachers; the many politicians, both in
Connecticut and elsewhere, who have steadfastly insisted that Sandy Hook should
be the impetus for legislation that will keep us safe from mass murderers; and most
especially the families of the victims in Sandy Hook who, all along, have been
hoping the General Assembly and governor might produce preventative legislation.
The journalistic breakthrough
occurred in a story filed by Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News.
“What
investigators found,” Mr. Lupica wrote, “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.
“’We were told
(Lanza) had around 500 people on this sheet,’ a law enforcement veteran told me
Saturday night. ‘Names and the number of people killed and the weapons that
were used, even the precise make and model of the weapons. It had to have taken
years. It sounded like a doctoral thesis; that was the quality of the research.’”
Partial information
about the “active murder investigation,” the often repeated formulation of
Lieutenant Paul Vance of the Connecticut state police, leaked out of a
conference in New Orleans, where people in the know, mostly police
investigators, were sharing information with other people in the know. Up to
this point, great pains had been taken to assure that authorized data remained
bottled up. Most journalists live in the hope that the truth will out –
eventually. The truth usually follows in the train of everything else; it’s often
the last actor on the stage before the curtain is rung down.
Adam Lanza, it appeared
from the New Orleans conference, was a studious killer well versed in the
methods of other mass murderers. His beau ideal of the perfect mass murderer
was Norway’s Anders Breivik. Connecticut
Commentary first mentioned Mr. Breivik in a blog and column titled “Sandy HookShould Teach Us How To Think”
way back in December.
Mr. Lanza
apparently was trying to beat Mr. Breivik’s record of 77 dead. Owing to the arrival
of first responders armed with substantial firepower, Mr. Lanza fell short of
the mark he had set for himself, having committed suicide after murdering 27
people, including his mother. Newtown has since set aside enough money to
provide all its schools with armed personnel.
The data that
leaked out of the New Orleans conference is important. Diagnosis and data are
always important for, say, doctors addressing a disease or legislators writing
laws. A law is a prophylactic, a legal preventative. There are no fewer than
three commissions charged with sifting through the Sandy Hook data so that legislators
might write reasonable laws to prevent future Sandy Hooks. BUT THERE IS LITTLE
AUTHORITAIVE DATA that any responsible legislator might consult in writing such
a law.
And why not?
Well, Mr. Vance will tell you that the “criminal investigation is ongoing.” It
may be completed in June, long after all the insufficient prophylactic laws
have been written. Will those legal remedies, based on partial or doubtful data
be effective in achieving deterrence?
Mr. Breivik was
not deterred by Norway’s capital punishment law because Norway has no such law.
Connecticut abolished its capital punishment law shortly after a mass murder in
Cheshire committed by newly released prisoners, only months before Mr. Lanza
took up arms against his mother, 20 school children and 6 teachers.
The General Assembly
is proposing to add to a long list of proscribed weapons yet another weapon, the
AR-15, produced here in Connecticut and the most often purchased sporting rifle
in the United States. Will that do the job? Grave doubts have been raised, not only
by members of the NRA, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy’s bete noir of the moment.
Most recently, U.S. Senate leader Harry Reid has doomed a federal ban on assault
weapons, possibly over the hearty objections of Mr. Murphy and other Democrats
in Connecticut who think that state laws prohibiting weapons are insufficient
to stop importation from other states.
At the time he
shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School, Mr. Lanza was armed with two
semi-automatic pistols – the weapon of choice in most cities, including
Chicago, murder capital of the United States and the political nursery bed of
President Barack Obama – and a shotgun (left in the car – WE THINK – “ongoing investigation,”
don’t you know) that would have been as devastating as the Bushmaster rifle he
used.
If Mr. Lanza had
survived, Connecticut would not have been able to execute him, because there is
no capital punishment law in Connecticut prescribing execution for mass
murderers or terrorists. Should there be such a law? Tried on terrorist charges
in Norway, Mr. Breivik was declared sane by a panel of five judges and sentenced
to 21 years in prison, a sentence that can be repeatedly extended by 5 years so
long as he is considered a threat to society.
The two repeat
offenders who murdered a family in Cheshire could have received early release
credits under a program initiated by Mike Lawlor,
Governor Dannel Malloy’s Under Secretary for Criminal Justice Policy and
Planning. Indeed under Mr. Lawlor’s
early release Risk Reduction Credit Program, two separate prisoners given early
release credits already have committed murders in Meriden and Manchester.
The unavailability
of authorized hard data on Mr. Lanza’s multiple murder spree should alarm legislators who
are poised to add to a growing list of banned weapons yet one more weapon in an
effort to deter such crimes as have been committed by Mr. Lanza and Mr. Breivik.
Are such legal placeboes palliatives rather than real solutions to real
problems?
Everyone in
Connecticut – those who fear for the safety of children, legislators, the
families of the victims, the tribunes of the people -- should be insisting that
the criminal report be released right now.
Tomorrow will be too late.
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