Adam Lanza’s Arsenal, and Some of the Homicidal and Suicidal Risk Factors that Overwhelmed Him

Gary G. Kohls, MD

Read the recently released list of items that were found in the Lanza home in New Town, CT, on Dec. 14, 2012 (below), and you will understand why so many people call Adam Lanza and his mom NRA-certified gun nuts. This unbelievable list, which must have cost tens of thousands of dollars, begs the question “What was the rationale behind the acquisition of such a huge arsenal of lethal weapons?” Simple paranoia seems inadequate to explain what seems to be grossly aberrant behavior.

But, of course, simple logic will tell us that there is no single reason behind any of the well-known American mass school shootings whose most consistent common denominator is the use of lethal weapons that were intended to be for shooting sports.

Some of the contributing factors that demand consideration in deciphering America’s ongoing and unique epidemic of school shootings have been debated ad nauseam in the media and in the many blogs where blindered single-issue folks with special interests to defend or axes to grind resort to vicious name-calling of any and all of those with sensible gun-control positions.

But there are several important factors in the school shootings that are taboo subjects, including 1) the psycho-pharmaceutical industry, 2) its brain-toxic psychiatric drugs that have been altering the brains of children ever since the school shootings started in force several decades ago, and 3) the unaware physicians and/or clinics that prescribed the drugs without warning the patients or families about the distinct possibilities of drug-induced violence, aggression, criminality, psychosis, suicidality, and homicidality. If Adam Lanza had been taking methamphetamine or dexedrine or cocaine or alcohol, we would know intuitively that brain-altering drugs were a major contributing factor explaining his irrational behavior.

Occasionally the mainstream media allows highly paid spokespersons for the various front group trade organizations (and their paymaster corporations that are profiting from the mass confusion) about who is or who is not to blame. And the more perplexed people and politicians are about the contributing root causes, and the more finger-pointing that goes on when another mass shooting happens, the more certain it will be that nothing will get resolved. The corporate profiteers who are orchestrating the confusion (and who deserve much of the blame) will continue to publicly deny responsibility and will go, laughing at us suckers, all the way to the bank.

The situation reminds me of Bob Dylan’s 1964 song “Who Killed Davey Moore?” about the death of a boxer. The lyrics can be found at http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/who-killed-davey-moore. The six-verse song has the referee, the angry crowd, the manager, the gambler, the boxing journalist, and the rival boxer who knocked Moore out each trying to explain why the death wasn’t their fault.

I’d like to see Dylan write an 11-verse song titled “Who Killed Nancy Lanza?” that would talk about all the following partially guilty parties who are denying any responsibility for the school shootings:  the National Rifle Association; the NRA’s paymasters in the lucrative weapons industries; the makers and promoters of violent videogames; the television producers who promote TV violence; the Pentagon and the mainstream media that consistently glorify war, lethal weapons, killing enemies, and militarism in general; the food industry that sells brain-malnourishing and brain-toxifying food; the promoters of addicting computer screen time that contributes to the sleep-deprived and agitated brain; the drug sellers in the lucrative pharmaceutical industries; the psychiatrists and physicians who seem to be diagnosing “mental illnesses” willy-nilly and handing out brain-altering drugs like candy; and vaccine makers and promoters who have been making injectable infant and toddler vaccines (numbering as many as three dozen individual vaccines by age five) that contain brain-toxic mercury, aluminum, and formaldehyde, not to mention a live virus (rubella) that can cause a chronic encephalitis that is indistinguishable from Autistic spectrum disorders like Adam Lanza suffered from.

It cannot be stated often enough that the major common denominator besides the guns in America’s epidemic of mass school shootings is the brain-altering, spellbinding, crazy-making psychiatric drugs that are well-known to be fully capable of causing psychotic episodes, mania, indifference to the suffering of others, suicidality, homicidality, and criminality, symptoms that can become manifest when the patient is taking the drugs or when the patient is withdrawing from them. So some patients are damned if they’re on them and damned if they’re quitting them.

And of course, our frenetic, dysfunctional, violence-prone, dog-eat-dog culture and its frequently absent, indulgent, abusive, neglectful, punitive, or authoritarian parenting styles contribute to revenge-seeking or acting-out behaviors against parents or scapegoats,  as well as depression, anxiety, anger, bullying, isolation, drug abuse, and the inability to form loving relationships.

Shouldn’t it be obvious by now that the child with a large number of the above risk factors will be the child who is most likely to engage in violence against others, the environment, or himself? And shouldn’t it be obvious that the child who has access to the most lethal methods of inflicting violence against others or herself will be the one who creates the most mayhem? And so the lame attempts at negating guns as a contributing factor that says “I have guns around and I never shot anybody” is saying nothing meaningful.

Adam Lanza had many of the risk factors as well as access to lethal weapons, and he played a lot of Call of Duty and other violent first-person shooter videos. He was a victim of excruciating loneliness and friendlessness and the humiliation that goes along with isolation that easily could have generated a desire for revenge against an uncaring, cruel culture that he hated.

Adam Lanza had been cursed with a dozen other seriously negative factors in his life. He had very few if any countervailing resiliency factors that added up to him being that one-in-a-million loner, an invisible kid that none of his peers even knew existed, and that nobody other than his mother really cared about. The only respect he was ever going to get was when he was pointing a gun at somebody. Adam Lanza’s psych drugs (carefully hidden from us by the authorities) probably represented the tipping point, just like it was for the 90 percent of American school shooters that preceded him.

Apparently there were medical records and prescription drugs that had been listed on one of the earlier published lists of items found at the Lanza home. On a list that I saw only once, there was no mention of any particular drug, and even the mention of medical records and drugs was kept off of later lists. Probably to protect the names of the prescribing physicians (in the name of patient confidentiality or prescriber embarrassment), the names of Lanza’s psychotropic drugs and the prescribing clinic continue to be withheld from the public—despite demands for that important information from the Citizen’s Commission for Human Rights, Able Child, and a number of other pharmaceutical and psychiatric industry watchdogs.

The same information about psych drugs is also being kept secret in the case of the Aurora Colorado shooter, who was known to be under the care of a University of Colorado psychiatrist (making psychiatric drug use a virtual certainty). And the pharmaceutical industry continues to have the most favored industry status in this nation. BigPharma is just another one of a multitude of multinational corporate powers that are too big to fail and therefore too big to criticize and even too big to indict for their common business practices of lying, cheating, tax evasion, over-charging, and other unethical or criminal behaviors.

Finally, here is the arsenal list, starting out with six curious items that need pondering as the National Rifle Association continues to deny any responsibility whatsoever for what happened in New Town:

“NRA Guide to Basics of Pistol Shooting”
Adam Lanza’s National Rifle Association certificate
Nancy Lanza’s NRA certificate
1 box with numerous rounds of Winchester .45 caliber bullets (So where is the pistol that shoots .45 caliber bullets?)
2 boxes of Winchester 5.56 mm, 20 rounds each (So where is the gun that shoots 5.56 mm rounds?)
1 black marksman BB gun

Weaponry Found
at the School

1 Bushmaster .223 caliber model XM15 rifle with a 30-round magazine
1 Glock 10mm handgun
1 9mm Sig Sauer P226 handgun
1 Saiga 12 gauge shotgun with two magazines containing 70 rounds
6 30-round magazines, three of them emptied

Guns found at home

1 Enfield bolt-action .323 rifle
1 Savage Mark II .22 caliber rifle with magazine, 3 live rounds, 1 spent cartridge
1 black marksman BB gun

Ammunition found at home


5 Winchester 12-gauge shotgun shells cut open, with buckshot
1 white plastic bag with 30 Winchester 12-gauge shotgun shells
1 can with .22 caliber and .45 caliber bullets
8 boxes of Winchester Windcat .22 caliber bullets, 50 rounds per box
20 “Estate” 12-gauge shotgun shells
4 boxes of SB buckshot 12-gauge, 10 round per box
1 box of Lightfield 12-gauge slugs
1 box of 20 Prvi Partizan 303 British rifle cartridges
1 box of 20 Federal 303 British rifle cartridges
2 boxes of .22 long rifle Blazer rounds, 50 each box
1 box with numerous rounds of Winchester .45 caliber bullets
2 boxes of 50 rounds of PPU .45 caliber automatic
1 box of 20 rounds for Remington .223 caliber
3 boxes of Blazer 40 S&W, 50 rounds each
2 boxes of Winchester 5.56 mm, 20 rounds each
1 box of Magtech 45ACP with 30 rounds
1 empty Box of SSA 5.56 mm
1 box of Fiocchi .45 auto with 48 rounds
80 rounds of CCI .22 long rifle
6 boxes of PMC .223 rem, 20 rounds each
6 Winchester 9 pellet buckshot shells, 12-gauge
2 Remington 12-gauge slugs
3 Winchester .223 rifle rounds
31 .22 caliber rounds
2 boxes of Underwood 10 mm auto, each with 50 rounds
130 rounds of Lawman 9mm Luger
2 spent shell casings for Glock 10mm
1 empty box of Gold Dot 9mm Luger
2 empty boxes of Winchester 9mm Luger
1 box of Underwood 10mm auto with 34 rounds
1 box of 29 miscellaneous 9mm rounds
1 spent .22 shell casing
1 small plastic bag containing numerous .22 caliber bullets
1 tan bag with numerous Blazer .45 caliber bullets
1 box of Blazer .22 long rifle with 50 rounds
1 box PPU 303 British cartridges with 9 rounds
2 Winchester 9mm rounds
2 brass-colored shell casings
1 small caliber bullet (live round) labeled C

Magazines found
at home

1 Promag 20-round 12-gauge drum magazine
1 MD Arms 20-round 12 gauge drum magazine
3 AGP Arms 12-gauge shotgun magazines
1 Surefire GunMag magazine with 8 rounds of Winchester 12-gauge, 9-pellet buckshot
2 AGP Arms 12-gauge shotgun magazines, taped together, each with 10 rounds of Winchester 9-pellet buckshot
2 empty Ram Line magazines for Ruger 10-22
1 AGP Arms Gen 2 12-gauge shotgun magazine with 10 rounds of Winchester 12-gauge, 9-pellet buckshot
1 clear plastic Ramline magazine for an AR 15
1 magazine with 10 rounds of .223 bullets

Knives found at home

Metal bayonet
1 6-foot-10-inch wood-handled two-sided pole with a blade on one side and a spear on the other
1 Samurai sword with a 28-inch blade and sheath
1 Samurai sword with a 21-inch blade and a sheath
1 Samurai sword with a 13-inch blade and sheath
1 knife with a 12-inch blade and sheath
1 wooden-handle knife with a 7.5-inch blade and sheath
1 wooden-handle knife with a 10-inch blade
1 knife with a 5.5-inch blade and sheath
1 black-handled knife with a 7-inch blade and sheath
1 black rubber-handled knife with 9.5-inch blade and sheath
1 white and brown-handled knife with 5-inch blade and sheath
1 brown wood-handled knife with a 10.25-inch blade
1 Panther brown-handled folding knife with a 3.75 inch blade
1 small blue folding knife

Gear found at home

1 Volcanic .22 starter pistol with 5 live rounds and 1 expended round
Leightning L3 ear protection
Peltor ear plugs
Simmons binoculars
Uncle Mike’s Sidekick nylon holster
Box for vest accessories
Leather dual magazine holder
Black leather handgun holster
High Sierra fanny pack
Numerous paper targets
1 cardboard target
1 Bushnell sport view rifle scope
Plastic bag of miscellaneous parts
Safariland holster paperwork
Glock handgun manual
MD-20 20-round shotgun magazine manual
MD Arms V-Plug guide
Bushmaster XM15 and C15 instruction manual
Savage Arms bolt-action rifle manual
Glock paperwork

Miscellaneous items
found at home

Adam Lanza’s National Rifle Association certificate
Nancy Lanza’s NRA certificate
Three photographs with images of what appears to be a deceased human covered with plastic and what appears to be blood
Holiday card with a check from Nancy Lanza to Adam Lanza for purchase of C183 firearm
1 digital print of a child and various firearms
1 military-style uniform
Handwritten notes with addresses of local gun shops
Receipts and emails documenting firearm and ammunition supplies
Blue folder labeled “guns” with receipts and paperwork
Paperwork titled “Connecticut Gun Exchange Glock 20SF 10mm” dated 12-21-11
Sandy Hook report card for Adam Lanza
New York Times article on a 2008 shooting at Northern Illinois University
1 Seagate Barracuda 500 GB hard drive, damaged
1 custom-built desktop computer, no hard drive
1 Microsoft Xbox with partially obliterated serial number
One cotton swab of blood-like substance
1 tan sheet with blood-like substance
1 tan fitted sheet with blood-like substance
1 striped towel with blood-like substance

Books found at home
 “NRA Guide to Basics of Pistol Shooting”
“Look me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s”
“Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Mind of an Autistic Savant”
“Train Your Brain to Get Happy”