For Whom the Bells Toll - Not for Adam Lanza—or his mother.

[DonViejo]

By Mark Joseph Stern

This Saturday, all houses of worship in Connecticut will ring their bells 26 times—once, at the behest of the governor, for each victim of the Sandy Hook shooting. But 28 people died in the massacre: 20 students, 6 teachers, the shooter’s mother, and the shooter himself. Why will the bells fall silent two tolls short?

The fraught and complex question of honoring the perpetrator of a mass atrocity along with its victims has long troubled such memorials. The 15 crosses erected to commemorate the victims of Columbine—including two for the shooters—were quickly reduced to 13, then to none at all. Following the tragedy at Virginia Tech, students gathered 33 stones as a makeshift memorial, but the stone representing the shooter was later removed. And on Saturday, the commemorative tolls will leave out not just Adam Lanza but also his mother, who died at his hands but who has posthumously been assigned some share of the blame.

It’s easy to understand the reasoning behind excluding a killer. In the aftermath of a tragedy, the shooter becomes the villain. And his family members become the accomplices. The families of the Columbine victims sued the families of the shooters, claiming they should have seen it coming, and won a settlement. In Newtown, after all, it was Lanza’s mother who bought the guns he used. But she didn’t just enable her deeply disturbed son. She was his first victim, shot to death in her bed, and it’s dishonest and unhealthy to simplify the grieving process by depriving her of her proper remembrance.

Whatever blame people assign to Nancy Lanza, Adam Lanza is the one who fired the bullets: first at his mother, then at the schoolhouse, then at himself. His act, the standard narrative suggests, was one of crazed retribution, then malice, then cowardice. Lanza never deserved to live, and so of course he clearly deserved to die. And now that he is dead, the argument goes, his memory shouldn’t be commemorated: It should be cursed.

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More
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2013/12/newtown_anniversary_should_nancy_and_adam_lanza_be_mourned.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content

[Hoyt]

1. Mom brought him up in gun culture. The whole thing is sad, but she had a choice.

Those kids and teachers did not.

[frylock]

2. zero fucks given

[Jefferson23]

3. This story is far from over imo, the school disrict has been fighting the release of his educational

records to date. Lanza's father was a parent too..the family dynamic includes him and
how it has been determined he is not culpable is not clear to me.

It is a disturbing story, the losses unimaginable..all their lives.