Large Fierce Mammal

Yesterday I put out my observations and personal position on the predictable Hell in a handcart response to last week’s school attacks – in short, when evil incarnate stalks the land, blame the thing that’s in its hand.

In a comment on that piece, Mrs. LFM posted a link to a Gawker.com article titled I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother that I want to specifically spotlight here because it contains a reference that illustrates the ineffectiveness of taking away the tools as an answer to homicidal rage.

I’m specifically referring to this:

A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7- and 9-year-old siblings knew the safety plan—they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me. Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me.

Encapsulated in this one little snippet is a personalized representation of desperation and helplessness in the face of a rampaging maniac, temporarily resolved by the usual process of negotiation coupled with immediate lock down of people and force multiplying tools to minimize casualties. Did it work? In the short term, yes, as evidenced by the fact that nobody died, but the measures taken were very risky emergency action drills necessitated by known and long standing behaviours that had never been resolved. They were not answers.

If you read the article in its entirety, you will see that they had no effect on eliminating the danger, only averting it. In the end, the security and safety of this family was restored only by removal of the causal element – the troubled son. The actions of two troubled sons half a world apart are why we’re having this conversation.