Large Fierce Mammal

Mrs. LFM and I have recently been moved to write about firearms, the laws that pertain to their possession and use, and public perceptions of both, entirely thanks to official reports on, and observed reaction to, the Newtown murders.

In addition to reports coming out of the mainstream media, this event has given birth to an entire genre of conspiracy theory rivalling that of the 9/11 attacks. In the latter case, the gist of the perceived conspiracy is that the 9/11 attacks were staged by agents provocateurs working for some shadow organization within the US government as a means of justifying the ensuing wars. The favoured position on the Newtown incident is that it was a media event staged for the express purpose of justifying banning, or at least further restricting, ownership of certain classes of firearms. Whatever you believe, tragic events have always been exploited to advantage by those with agendas and axes to grind, and Newtown is no different. Humans are opportunistic animals, and exploitation of events after the fact doesn’t represent conclusive evidence of complicity beforehand. That having been said, I’m having trouble with pesky inconsistencies that have infected reports on Newtown.

In a CNN article published 19 December 2012 under the title Newtown shooter’s guns: What we know, we read, in part,

The primary weapon used in the attack was a “Bushmaster AR-15 assault-type weapon,” said Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul Vance. The rifle is a Bushmaster version of a widely made AR-15, the civilian version of the M-16 rifle used by the U.S. military.

Except, maybe, it wasn’t. NBC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pete Williams subsequently came out with this statement (video embedded in the link provided above):

This continues to be a very complex investigation and there is a lot of contradictory information out there, but we have some new information … from a couple of federal officials and state officials.

They say now that there were actually four handguns inside the school, not just two as we were initially told. Four handguns and apparently only handguns that were taken into the school.

We knew that Adam Lanza, the man said to be the gunman here, also had an ‘assault-style’ AR-15 -style rifle that he had taken to the school, it was in the car he drove there, his mother’s car, but we have been told by several officials that he had left that in the car.

I am not without experience in being in command of complex emergency response situations, coordinating resources in others, and managing reports about these matters to the media. Every emergency management and response agency I have ever been involved with throughout my 30 year career has within its standard operating guidelines a set of policies defining how, and by whom, information about any incident, and most particularly an ongoing one that has affected the lives of many victims, can be released to the media (ongoing for sure in the Newtown case because, make no mistake, the effects will be ongoing for the families affected for a long time after the shooting stopped). Permitting free reign for anyone with a camera and a microphone to stick them in the face of anyone they find on the scene is a recipe for disaster, and a guarantee of muddying the waters of any investigation that is, or may come to be, going on.

Maintaining the integrity of a crime scene goes far beyond surrounding it with yellow tape proclaiming “POLICE LINE – DO NOT CROSS”, putting little numbers next to shell casings, and photographing the corpses before drawing chalk lines around them and then zipping them into body bags for removal. Everyone and everything going in or out of it must be controlled, including information. It therefore dictates how much information is released to the public, and the timing of those releases. Left in a vacuum, the media will behave badly. They will pull stunts to get information that may be counterproductive, or even directly opposed, to the best interests of a legitimate investigation. They will infer things. They will add 2 and 2, and come up with 5. They need timely, consistent, regular updates from one official mouthpiece to keep them on the reservation. Treated properly, they can be your best ally, but don’t keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit. Everybody operating on a management level in emergency response circles knows this.

In the wake of something like Newtown, the most important point to get across to the public is that the matter has been contained, the ongoing danger has been stopped, and the perpetrator along with whatever implements of destruction he or she employed have been taken into custody. In accomplishing that, I completely understand releasing what might be considered too little information at the outset because, like a bullet from a rifle, loose words cannot be called back in a later moment of regret. When you have a dead killer on the ground, and nothing else to go on, like finding a bomb in a building, it’s a mistake to jump to the conclusion that it’s the only one.

If you’ve ever watched a police press briefing in the wake of a major drug bust, you’re familiar with the tables in front of the person doing the talking that are festooned with every bag of meth, stack of cash, and firearm seized in the raids. After an incident like Newtown, every firearm found in the school, or on the school property, would have been quickly contained, catalogued, rendered safe, and removed by police. There would have been absolutely no ambiguity as to what types of firearms were found in the school.

Now, if it were to come to pass that an AR15 type rifle was found in the trunk of the car Adam Lanza used to drive to the school, and weapons other than those found to have been actually used in the perpetration of his rampage accidentally made their way into a media briefing, this still doesn’t excuse making any official statement proclaiming that one specific firearm was, “… the primary weapon used ….” Pistols are pistols. Rifles are rifles. There is no mistaking the two, even if your level of knowledge doesn’t permit specific identification of make, model, and calibre. Spent shell casings would have littered the floor and those ejected from an AR15 look nothing like the ones ejected when a pistol is fired, even to an untrained eye.Simply put, size matters, and it’s obvious by comparison.

It could be argued that the weapons taken to the school that day were kept hidden from public view out of consideration for the families of the victims who might be traumatized by having them in their sight, and this would make sense to me, but at the same time it troubles me to read things like this, commenting on remarks made by NBC correspondent Pete Williams, referred to above:

The correspondent makes it clear over and over again that he confirmed this information with federal and state officials. Now, a lot of media reports contradict this one, but somebody’s lying. The report that an ‘AR-15-style’ assault rifle was in the trunk of murderer Adam Lanza’s car is up for dispute as well. If one examines footage from police breaking into Lanza’s car, one sees police clearing a round from a “long gun of some type” that does not appear to be “AR-15 style” or “assault-style”.

Once again, seeing police in a grainy video clearing a round from a long gun – I have seen the footage and can state that it’s clearly not an AR15 or anything like it, for a number of reasons but most importantly because the operating handle used to repeatedly retract the bolt is in the wrong place – as with my bomb example given earlier, this does not represent proof that an AR15 wasn’t also present. What it does is further raise concerns over the accuracy of the information that has, and continues to be, released.

On the surface, we have a mentally unstable man who felt justified in killing his mother, illegally taking possession of a number of her legally owned firearms, ammunition, and vehicle, driving to the school where she worked wherein he used some of those firearms to kill or wound people he found there, ultimately killing himself. Non-war related mass killings perpetrated by mentally unstable people have happened before employing means ranging through firearms, arson, explosives, and salesmanship. They will happen again. Their reasons need to be rooted out so we can find a way into the mind of mayhem, because the outcome of their madness – the end game – is what delivers the punch to all of  us, and simply deciding to treat every person in the world as a ticking time bomb based on the actions of a very few, no matter how inflammatory, is no solution.

So, we need to understand what happened in Newtown, where it was already against existing laws to kill school children before Adam Lanza fired his first shot. We don’t need confusion, bullshit, or agendas. Let’s get it done and move on.