Newtown shooter Adam Lanza may have been motivated to commit the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School because he was constantly abused and bullied while he was a student there, an unidentified relative has revealed.
The New York Daily News reports that Lanza "never seemed emotionally right after his time in Sandy Hook," according to a member of Lanza's family who would only speak on the condition of anonymity.
"Adam would come home with bruises all over his body," the family member said. "His mom would ask him what was wrong, and he wouldn't say anything. He would just sit there."
The relative claimed Adam's mother Nancy was fiercely protective of her son, partly because of the incessant bullying he suffered while at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
"He was a sick boy," the relative explained to The Daily News.
According to newly released warrants that include reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the morning of Dec. 14, 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot his mother Nancy in the head as she lay in bed, packed four legally purchased 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.
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. 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 rifle, 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, along with 70 rounds of Winchester 12-gauge shotgun rounds.
Since the tragedy, authorities have remained cryptically quiet on possible motives in the shooting, citing an ongoing investigation that could easily extend into summer.
Evidence emerged earlier in March that Lanza had been planning the shooting for "years." The New York Daily News spoke to an unidentified "law enforcement veteran" who 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. Colonel Stebbins said he believed Lanza's obsession with video games was likely among the factors that motivated Lanza in the massacre.
According to an FBI report among released police 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."
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.
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.
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