And it is not gun laws, it is not "Aspergers."

If this is true, and we damn well deserve to know if it is, then it is a solid indication that this young man was schizophrenic, which is a condition that not only has a solid association with violence, it also has a solid association with all sorts of other not-nice things, like hearing voices telling you to kill people.  In fact the "hallmark" of schizophrenia is the inability to distinguish what is real from what is not.

Adam Lanza's mother had been increasingly concerned over her son's well-being in the weeks before the tragedy, telling a friend just a week before that he was "getting worse" and that "she was losing him," the New York Daily News reported. That report makes no mention of Asperger's syndrome, but it cites Adam's uncle who said he was taking an anti-psychotic drug called Fanapt. The Atlantic points out that several diagnoses have been bandied about in the press, including autism, Asperger's, and "personality disorder."

Many people may have missed this, and in fact I did until someone on the forum brought over the quote itself.  That drug is a relatively new one and in fact was the subject of a non-approvable letter originally.

The name caught my eye because I loosely follow biotech companies and remembered it from the denial back in 2008.  The FDA wanted another study and more safety data.  The company repackaged and resubmitted the previous study instead, which was a "Hail Mary" pass that almost-never succeeds.  In this case it did and the company's stock skyrocketed.

But this isn't so much about the drug itself as what it says about this young man, if in fact he was on the drug.  See, this drug, like all anti-psychotics, sometimes causes serious psychiatric side effects itself, including extreme aggression.

It also isn't indicated for anyone not under severe psychiatric stress -- and schizophrenia is pretty-much the 900lb gorilla of mental illness.

If this is real then we deserve to have this fact out in the open, in public, right damned now and all political activity associated with alleged "remedies" must stop until this allegation is fully vetted and either proved up or disproved, in public. 

If this is true there is no gun law that would have stopped this event; if he could not have gotten a gun he would have used a gallon of gasoline, a home-made bomb, a knife, something, anything.  We know he was willing to kill his own mother to acquire the weapons -- he would have killed a cop, a random person on the street, or a store clerk.

If this allegation is true this mass-murder was not about guns at all.

The point here, folks, is that there is simply no way to remove from society all of the tools and things that someone can use to commit murder, even mass-murder, if they have voices in their head telling them to kill people.

The only way to stop this tragedy, assuming this allegation is true, was to detect that this individual was delusional to the point of being dangerous and thus had to, at least temporarily, be institutionalized.

TO THE MEDIA, TO OUR POLITICIANS, TO YOU, DEAR READER: 

DEMAND THE TRUTH ON THIS, RIGHT NOW.  FULL-STOP ON THE POLITICAL BULL****.  IF THIS IS REPORT IS TRUTHFUL THEN WE MUST KNOW AND WE MUST FIX WHAT IS BROKEN IN OUR MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM SO THAT THOSE WHO HAVE THIS DISORDER ARE, TO THE BEST OF OUR ABILITY, IDENTIFIED AND HELPED. 

BLAMING OR BANNING GUNS WILL NEITHER HELP OR ENHANCE PUBLIC SAFETY.  IN FACT THAT POLITICAL ACT WILL MAKE US ALL LESS SAFE SINCE IT WILL NOT STOP ONE ADDITIONAL PERSON WHO HEARS VOICES FROM TRYING TO KILL, BUT IT WILL PREVENT LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS FROM BEING ABLE TO DEFEND AGAINST THE PERSON WITH THE IMAGINARY VOICES IN THEIR HEAD.

Update: Fox News is claiming that as of this point there has been no medication recovered in the searches they have executed, and that they are using warrants to gain access to medical records that would provide evidence in this regard.

Update #2: It is now being reported by Fox News that the gunman's mother was going through the process necessary to have Adam committed.  Again, let's have the facts.....