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| Adam Lanza |
My immediate reaction upon hearing the news was the same as the rest of the world of shock, horror and revulsion. In fact, even 24 hours after the event it still takes some dealing with in terms of why someone would want to go out and slaughter so many innocent children and adults for no-good reason at all.
The first point that I made to the good wife upon hearing the news was that it would have to take someone of an unsound mind to even contemplate such actions, let alone deliberately set out and carry through with any thoughts that he may have held in that direction.
However as time went by and the whole world watched this tragedy unfold we all realized that what was appearing on our television screens was not a movie but was real and had actually taken place.
We have all watched these types of events unfold before, but this time it was so evil that words fail to describe what the whole world was seeing unfold. Instead of the victims being adults what this sick and deranged individual had actually set out to do was to slaughter innocents, small children, or babies, because that is what most of them were, nothing much more than babes in arms.
This time the situation was completely different. What he had actually done by killing small children was to cross over the line into a completely different world. In doing so, he has set a precedent to take humankind somewhere that no one has ever dared go before.
In addition, as far as I can see for that there is never going to be any forgiveness, not in this life or the next. As that is the case, then the only final destination that I can see for Adam Lanza is eternal damnation, as much as it regrets me to have to make a statement such at that.
However, in the case of the victims of this tragedy there is the certainty that they have all gone to paradise. It is certainly the instance that they have all been saved from any further suffering or tragedy that this world could have dished out to them in the future.
If there is anything that is good at all that has come out of this catastrophe, it is that one fact alone. That is the only point in the positive when it comes to analysing what is otherwise one of the saddest days in the entire history of the USA
A brief history of that dreadful day
Adam Lanza of Newtown, Connecticut was a child of the suburbs and a child of divorce who at age 20 still lived with his mother.
This morning he appears to have started his day by shooting his mother Nancy in the face, and then drove her car to nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School, armed with two handguns and a semi-automatic rifle.
There, before turning his gun on himself, he shot and killed 20 children, who President Obama later described as "beautiful little kids" between five and 10 years of age. Six adults were also killed at the school. Nancy Lanza was found dead in her home.
A relative told ABC News that Adam was "obviously not well."
Family friends in Newtown also described the young man as troubled and described Nancy as rigid. "[Adam] was not connected with the other kids," said Barbara Frey, who also said he was "a little bit different ... Kind of repressed."
State and federal authorities believe his mother may have once worked at the elementary school where Adam went on his deadly rampage, although she was not a teacher, according to relatives, perhaps a volunteer.
Nancy and her husband Peter, Adam's father, divorced in 2009. When they first filed for divorce in 2008, a judge ordered that they participate in a "parenting education program."
Peter Lanza, who drove to northern New Jersey to talk to police and the FBI, is a vice president at GE Capital and had been a partner at global accounting giant Ernst & Young.
Adam's older brother Ryan Lanza, 24, has worked at Ernst & Young for four years, apparently following in his father's footsteps and carving out a solid niche in the tax practice. He too was interviewed by the FBI. Neither he nor his father is under any suspicion.
"[Ryan] is a tax guy and he is clean as a whistle," a source familiar with his work said.
Police had initially identified Ryan as the killer. Ryan sent out a series of Facebook posts saying it wasn't him and that he was at work all day. Video records as well as card swipes at Ernst & Young verified his statement that he had been at the office.
Two federal sources told ABC News that identification belonging to Ryan Lanza was found at the scene of the mass shooting. They say that identification may have led to the confusion by authorities during the first hours after the shooting. Neither Adam nor Ryan has any known criminal history.
A Sig Sauer handgun and a Glock handgun were used in the slayings and .223 shell casings – a round used in a semi-automatic military-style rifle -- were also found at the scene. Nancy Lanza had numerous weapons registered to her, including a Glock and a Sig Sauer. She also owned a Bushmaster rifle -- a semi-automatic carbine chambered for a .223 caliber round. However, federal authorities cannot confirm that the handguns or the rifle were the weapons recovered at the school.
Numerous relatives of the Lanzas in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, as well as multiple friends, are being interviewed by the FBI in an effort to put together a better picture of the gunman and any explanation for today's tragedy.
"I think the most important thing to point out with this kind of individual is that he did not snap this morning and decide to act out violently," said former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole. "These acts involve planning and thoughtfulness and strategizing in order to put the plan together so what may appear to be snap behavior is not that at all."
WHY I AM NOT A DISPENSATIONALIST; John Nelson Darby is recognized as the father of dispensationalism later made popular in the United States by Cyrus Scofield's Scofield Reference Bible. Charles Henry Mackintosh, 1820–1896, with his popular style spread Darby's teachings to humbler elements in society and may be regarded as the journalist of the Brethren Movement. CHM popularised Darby more than any other Brethren author. As there was no Christian teaching of a “rapture” before Darby began preaching about it in the 1830s, he is sometimes credited with originating the "secret rapture" theory wherein Christ will suddenly remove His bride, the Church, from this world before the judgments of the tribulation. Dispensationalist beliefs about the fate of the Jews and the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Israel put dispensationalists at the forefront of Christian Zionism, because "God is able to graft them in again," and they believe that in His grace he will do so according to their understanding of Old Testament prophecy. They believe that, while the methodologies of God may change, His purposes to bless Israel will never be forgotten, just as He has shown unmerited favour to the Church, He will do so to a remnant of Israel to fulfill all the promises made to the genetic seed of Abraham. I am not a dispensationalist; it is unbiblical.
