Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting: Adam Lanza Kept an Arsenal of Weapons, Released Warrants Reveal

Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter Adam Lanza was hiding an arsenal of weapons in his Newtown, Conn. bedroom that were purchased for him by his mother, including several guns, 1,600 rounds of ammunition, and numerous knives and swords, according to newly released police warrants.

The documents, which had been kept sealed for 90 days following the December tragedy, provide fresh insight into Lanza's shockingly isolated, seemingly gun and video game obsessed home life, and reveal new details about the killings. 

According to the newly released warrants that include reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the morning of Dec. 14, 20-year-old Lanza shot his mother Nancy in the head as she lay in bed, Danbury State's Attorney Stephen Sedensky said in a statement, according to USA Today. He then packed four firearms and drove a black Honda Civic to the Connecticut K-4 elementary school. Lanza opened fire in two classrooms around 9:30 a.m., fatally shooting 20 children and six adults with a Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle, showering the rooms with 154-bullets in less than five minutes before taking his own life with a Glock 10 mm handgun. Police revealed the Bushmaster had a 30-round capacity magazine; 14 rounds were left in the magazine, with one bullet still in the chamber. 

Authorities said Lanza was found dressed up in military clothing, including a bulletproof vest. He still had another three, 30-round magazines left for the Bushmaster, as well as another loaded handgun on him. According to another warrant for the Honda Civic driven by Lanza, police found a fully-loaded 12-gauge shotgun in the car's glove compartment, along with 70 rounds of Winchester 12-gauge shotgun rounds. Police now believe Lanza's mother enabled her son's fascination with guns by making "straw purchases" for him. The guns used in the shooting were legally purchased and registered to his mother, Sedensky said, according to Yahoo News. 

Among the weapons seized from Lanza's home, police found several knives, three samurai swords, "a 7-foot, wood-handled pole with a blade on one side and a spear on the other," and an open gun locker that showed no signs of a break in. 

According to an FBI report among the warrants, Lanza hardly ever left home, thought of himself as a "shut-in," was a passionate gamer who often played the first-person shooter video game "Call of Duty," and believed the elementary school was his "life."

Among the items collected from Lanza's home, police found a National Rifle Association certificate in his bedroom, seven of Lanza's journals, various drawings he'd created, a holiday card with a check from his mother to purchase a gun, a 2008 article from the New York Times about a school shooting at Northern Illinois University and three photographs of "what appeared to be a dead person covered with plastic and blood." Police also seized several books including a beginner's guide to pistol shooting, as well as "Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's" and "Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Mind of an Autistic Savant."

State's Attorney Sedensky has asked a judge to keep certain information that includes the identity of a witness and other unidentified items collected from Lanza's home sealed for another 90 days.

Evidence emerged earlier in the month that Lanza had been planning the shooting for "years." The New York Daily News spoke to an unidentified "law enforcement veteran" who recently visited a conference where Connecticut State Police colonel Danny Stebbins spoke at length about the tragedy and revealed numerous new details surrounding the case. Stebbins reportedly explained that police now know Lanza had been planning meticulously with a 7 foot long, 4 foot wide spreadsheet that displayed obsessively researched information - in nine-point font - concerning "virtually every mass murder" in the U.S. and abroad.

A 2011 Supreme Court decision upholding the right of minors to purchase violent video games in California ruled 7-2 that there is no conclusive causal connection between violent video games and violence. 

"Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove  that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively. Any demonstrated effects are both small and indistinguishable from effects produced by other media...California also cannot show that the Act's restrictions meet the alleged substantial need of parents who wish to restrict their children's access to violent videos," the majority said in its opinion, according to the Washington Post.

Available evidence indicates that more guns equals more murders; a finding supported across states, and countries, according to The Harvard Injury Control Research Center, who analyzed gun and homicide data and literature. Since 1982, there have been "at least 61 mass murders carried out with firearms across the country" in 30 states, according to Mother Jones; of those, 15 occurred in 2012 alone, according to The Huffington Post.