[He] offers a blueprint for his laptop computer and provides YouTube links to a commercial for a laughing doll from the 1970s and for The Rock-afire Explosion, an animatronics band that played in ShowBiz Pizza locations in the 1980s.

In one thread on the website thehighroad.org in October 2009 at 1 a.m., the poster believed to be Lanza asks whether a ban on a certain semiautomatic pistol might extend to other weapons.

Another poster suggests that he ask the Connecticut State Police.

"I always prefer asking through proxy when I can avoid speaking to someone directly. I was just wondering if anyone knew because I have a fetish for .32 ACP," the poster suspected to be Lanza responds, referring to ammunition.

Continue Reading...

Carrey has in recent months become increasingly outspoken about gun violence. In March, he played both a clenched Charlton Heston and a suave country and western singer crooning the anti-gun anthem "Cold Dead Hand" for Funny Or Die. Sample lyric: "Only the devil's true devotees could profiteer from pain and fear." It quickly became one of the most viewed clips in the site's history, and led to a predictable amount of frothing from fans and in conservative outlets like Fox News. In response, Carrey described the network as a "media colostomy bag that has begun to burst at the seams."

Continue Reading...

I didn’t choose to have a child. Not if “choosing” means something rational—weighing pros and cons, coming to a conclusion. I tried that process but ran away from it because, even though I wanted a child, it seemed to me that creating a whole new person was such an enormity that no one could rationally decide to do such a thing. There is so much at stake, and so little certainty about the outcome. A child that I conceived might be happy, but he might be miserable beyond endurance. The child might bring happiness to others, or he might ruin people’s lives. It seemed to me that creating life was an act of astonishing hubris because it made me responsible, maybe morally responsible, for huge consequences. For most of our species’ history, we were spared that decision because procreation was not (for the most part) a choice, but merely something that happened to us. It was a biological destiny. We escaped that destiny when science gave us control over our fertility. But I wasn’t equal to the freedom that science gave me. Fearful of such an immense decision amid such uncertainty, I allowed myself to drift into parenthood instead of choosing it. I let other people’s expectations, the sheer normality of having children, construct a new, sociological destiny for me to replace the biological one and protect me from what seemed an impossible choice.

Continue Reading...

An excerpt (emphasis mine):

Just in the last several days, a Bismarck news anchor mistakenly uttered vulgarity on live television. He's been heralded by celebrities from New York to California as some sort of pop icon. His bosses have been called goons because they fired him.

We learned this week that the Pentagon is vetting its guide on religious tolerance with a group that compared Christian evangelism to rape, and advocated that military personnel and colluding chaplains who proselytize should be court-marshalled.

Forty years ago, the United States Supreme Court sanctioned abortion on demand. And we wonder why our culture sees school shootings so often.

Not exactly "This is water," is it?

Continue Reading...

"Adam would come home with bruises all over his body," the relative told the Daily News. "His mom would ask him what was wrong, and he wouldn't say anything. He would just sit there."

The family member went on to say that Lanza's mother was distressed by the abuse, and didn't believe school officials were protecting her son: "Nancy felt fiercely protective of him. She was convinced the school wasn't doing enough to protect Adam. It made her irate."

The relative also appears to attribute Lanza's emotional and mental health problems to the experience, telling the Daily News that he never "seemed right" after his time in Sandy Hook.

“He was a sick boy,” the relative said.

Continue Reading...

Then, somehow, things seemed to get even worse for the NRA. After a full week of silence after the tragedy, it held a press conference in Washington, D.C., in which its leader, Wayne LaPierre, inspired laughter and ridicule by supporting zero reforms to guns, aside from a call for more of them (arm teachers!).

Continue Reading...

Twice on March 25, Ebert tweeted a link to a Salon excerpt from Jeff Chu's new memoir, "Does Jesus Really Love Me?" In it, Chu, a gay man, goes undercover in the Topeka, Kan.- based "church," where he spends a day picketing with the group who believes that "Spreading their gospel is their duty and their gesture of kindness to a hell-bound world." It just happens that their method of spreading the love involves screaming, "I don’t even know what’s growing inside your crusty assholes!" at gay men.

Continue Reading...

Obama, flanked by grim-faced mothers who have lost their children to guns, said Washington must do something after the tragic mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., three months ago. He called out to the families of four children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School sitting in his audience.

"Shame on us if we've forgotten," Obama said. "I haven't forgotten those kids."

Obama's event comes as gun control legislation faces an uncertain future, even though more than 80 percent of people say in polling they support expanded background checks. Backed by a $12 million TV advertising campaign financed by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, gun control groups scheduled rallies around the country Thursday aimed at pressuring senators to back the effort.

Obama said the upcoming vote is the best chance in more than a decade to reduce gun violence. He encouraged Americans, especially gun owners, to press lawmakers home from a congressional spring break to "turn that heartbreak into something real."

Continue Reading...

Prosecutors Thursday made other details from the investigation public, including information from searches carried out on the shooter's home and car. As Salon noted, details about Lanza collecting articles on previous mass shootings had already been leaked to the press by an anonymous member of the investigative team. Key details officially released Thursday, noted by the AP, include:

Continue Reading...

Pryor’s problem, he explains to Salon, is that he’s having trouble finding ammunition and firearms for his officers, thanks to a national shortage. The cause? A run on supply from gun lovers afraid that Congress or state legislatures will impose new gun control laws in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting.

“Everyone is thinking, they’re going to stop manufacturing, or they’re going to be taxing and all this, so it’s just this mentality of, let’s all buy up everything now just in case. And it hurts us,” Pryor said. “This is ridiculous. This shouldn’t be happening to law enforcement.”

But he’s hardly alone. Rommel Dionisio, a New York-based firearms industry analyst at Wedbush Inc., confirms the trend is a national phenomenon. “Most certainly, ammunition is in very tight supply in addition to firearms,” thanks to “consumer fears of possible bans,” he told Salon in an email.

Continue Reading...

Nearly 15 weeks have passed since the shooting in Newtown. I spent the morning of Friday, December 14 feverishly collecting scant pieces of information about an incident in my hometown. As the details emerged, I did my best to shun the lurid images rushing to my mind. A massacre that could rival the most gruesome spectacle in any modern war had somehow unfolded in the elementary school I had attended as a child. I imagined the terror and anguish that must have gripped every parent with a child at Sandy Hook, then thought of the innumerable family members whose lives would never be the same after that day. It was the most sadistic act of madness imaginable visited upon the most innocent place I could think of.

Continue Reading...

Alissa Parker told "CBS This Morning" in an excerpt of an interview that aired Thursday that she wanted to meet with Adam Lanza's father, Peter Lanza, to tell him "something" she needed to get out of her system.

It was unclear what they discussed or when the meeting took place. CBS plans to show the rest of the interview with Alissa and Robbie Parker on Friday morning, revealing more details about their meeting with Peter Lanza.

The Parkers' 6-year-old daughter, Emilie, died in December's shooting rampage. They tell CBS they wanted to ask Peter Lanza about his son's medical history and other issues.

Continue Reading...

On Monday, the New York Daily News' Mike Lupica reignited the ever-popular "do video games cause mass murder" debate with a story bound to send young American males into a furor of rage and spitting madness. (That is, if they weren't already in that state after their most recent weekend-long marathon session of "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.")

Lupica quotes at length the hearsay account of an unnamed law enforcement "veteran," who seems to take special care in enunciating the word "gamer" with the hatred and disgust that one might normally employ for "child rapist" or "genocidal totalitarian dictator."

"These guns, one of them an AR-15, in the hands of a violent, insane gamer. It was like porn to a rapist. They feed on it until they go out and say, enough of the video screen. Now I’m actually going to be a hunter.

"There really was no other subject matter inside his head. Just this: Kill, kill, kill. It really was like he was lost in one of his own sick games."

Continue Reading...

Arms manufacturers Smith & Wesson,  Cabela's and Big 5 all boasted sterling third quarter results in the post-Sandy Hook gun boom. A number of big retail chains moved to end sales of AR-15s and similar assault weapons in the wake of the shooting and Cerberus Capital, the New York firm that owned Bushmaster, sold the company, calling the Connecticut shooting a "watershed event." But a small number of hedge funds, accustomed to a sadly familiar pattern (gun massacre, leads to fear of gun bans, leads to mass gun sales), moved to make bank on the tragedy and this predictable trajectory.

Continue Reading...

Then, we kept teaching.

The week after Sandy Hook, I’d had nightmares about places I could hide my students if a shooter came — they're little, so I could put them in closets or drawers, I could stand outside the door and try to talk the guy down, I could dial 911 behind my back — but that’s not what our lockdown ended up like.

Our lockdown wasn’t very scary at all. It was usual for New Orleans. Our lockdown meant an 18-year-old boy died a block and a half away -- he was the only intended target, the only death.

His mother, the news reports, cried in the middle of the street and would not stand up for anything. It was 2 o'clock in the afternoon, not a cloud in the sky. And inside my school, as the lockdown ended and we heard the news, I thought: Thank God it’s not one of mine. 

Last year, I taught high school, and when it comes to my big kids, gun violence is a text message I get in the morning while I’m headed to school:

Continue Reading...

“This is immediate,” said Joe Arpaio, the Maricopa County sheriff. “I don’t need a new law to send out my posse.”

And sure enough, when classes resumed after Christmas break, Arpaio boasted on CNN that patrols had begun in Maricopa County at the 59 schools that fall under his primary jurisdiction. His armed and uniformed “possemen” would only appear on school grounds in the event of a crime, he said, but teachers, parents and students would notice them cruising school zones in marked vehicles.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

[liveblog id=64]

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

Chris Frantz, the former Talking Heads drummer, volunteered his Fairfield County, Conn., home studio for the Newtown students' "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," and admitted he initially felt trepidation about working with a small group of Sandy Hook students. "I wondered, 'How is this going to be perceived by people on the outside?'" he told Salon. "But as soon as the children showed up at our home, I knew it was a unique and important opportunity."

Continue Reading...