Police officer to paramedic minutes before entering the Sandy Hook school after the massacre, "This will be the worst day of your life."

Courtesy of The Guardian:

Police released thousands of pages Friday from their investigation into the Newtown massacre, providing the most detailed and disturbing picture yet of the rampage and Adam Lanza's fascination with murder, while also depicting school employees' brave and clearheaded attempts to protect the children. 

Among the details: more than a dozen bodies, mostly children, were discovered packed "like sardines" in a bathroom where they had hidden. And the horrors encountered inside the school were so great that when police sent in paramedics, they tried to select ones capable of handling what they were about to witness. 

"This will be the worst day of your life," police Sgt William Cario warned one. 

The documents' release marks the end of the investigation into the December 14, 2012, shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary that left 20 first-graders and six educators dead.

I have little doubt that it was indeed the worst day of that paramedics life, as evidenced by what was revealed in these documents.

Included were photographs of the Lanza home showing numerous rounds of ammunition, gun magazines, shot-up paper targets, gun cases, shooting earplugs and a gun safe with a rifle in it. 

A former teacher of Lanza's was quoted as telling investigators that Lanza exhibited anti-social behavior, rarely interacted with other students and wrote obsessively "about battles, destruction and war." 

"In all my years of experience, I have known (redacted) grade boys to talk about things like this, but Adam's level of violence was disturbing," the teacher told investigators. The teacher added: "Adam's creative writing was so graphic that it could not be shared." 

The documents also fill in more details about how the shooting unfolded and how staff members looked out for the youngsters. Teachers heard janitor Rick Thorne try to get Lanza to leave the school. One teacher, who was hiding in a closet in the math lab, heard Thorne yell, "Put the gun down!" An aide said that she heard gunfire and that Thorne told her to close her door. Thorne survived. 

Teacher Kaitlin Roig told police she heard "rapid-fire shooting" near her classroom. She rushed her students into the classroom's bathroom, pulled a rolling storage unit in front of the bathroom door as a barricade and then locked the door. 

She heard a voice say, "Oh, please, no. Please, no." Eventually, police officers slid their badges under the bathroom door. Roig refused to come out and told them that if they were truly police, they should be able to get the key to the door which they did. 

Others weren't so lucky. 

Police Lt Christopher Vanghele said he and another officer found what appeared to be about 15 bodies packed in another bathroom. So many people had tried to cram inside the bathroom that the door couldn't be closed, and the shooter gunned them all down, Vanghele surmised. 

Vanghele also recalled another officer carrying a little girl in his arms and running for the exit. Vanghele ran with him through the parking lot as the officer repeated, "Come on sweetie, come on sweetie." The girl didn't survive.

There were amazing stories of bravery that day from the teachers, the principal who gave her life, and even the janitor who confronted the young gunman.

And the compassion of the police who had to witness such a terrible event, and then had the forethought to select only those paramedics that they thought could handle the scenes of carnage, to send into the school with the warning "This will be the worst day of your life."

This compassion stands in stark contrast to some on the Right who were so desperate to disprove another terrible shooting had taken place that they invented a crazy conspiracy about a false flag operation designed to energize lawmakers into passing new restrictions on gun ownership.

I wonder if any of those people would change their tune after talking to the police or paramedics who had to witness the aftermath of our lax gun laws in this country?

Yeah, probably not.

Newly unearthed photo of heroic teacher and her class reminds us that there are some for whom there will NEVER be another Christmas.

Courtesy of Mediaite:  

The photo shows a smiling Soto along with her full class and another Newton victim, teacher Anne Marie Murphy. The photo was taken last fall. Soto, 27, was killed trying to protect her class from the gunman, hiding them in cabinets and a classroom closet to save them from the eyes of Adam Lanza. When he came into her classroom, she told him her children were in the gym. 

Murphy is another hero: she was found with her arms around one of the slain children. 

The photo also includes victims Dylan Hockley, Allison Wyatt, Jesse Lewis, Avielle Richman, all 6 years old.

I know that it is the holiday and that all of us want to think about spending time with our families and forgetting the troubled year that it is now coming to a close, however I also believe that it is important that we not allow the passage of time, and the distractions of the holidays, make us forget the tragedy that happened just ten days ago.

THAT is what the NRA and their conservative supporters are hoping for. If they can just keep politicians from doing anything of substance in the next few weeks they hope that this whole thing will just blow over with no gun control laws on the books.

And to that end they are also working double time to divert attention away from the easy access of guns in this country to Adam Lanza's mental health.

One of the phrases I have heard repeated by any number of Republican surrogates is that Adam Lanza's mental illness was well known, But NO, no it wasn't. In fact it is STILL not known what his exact diagnosis might have been.

And if it turns out that Adam did indeed have Asperger's Syndrome then we still know NOTHING about why he killed his mother and murdered those babies in that school.

I have worked with a number of children diagnosed with Aspergers and let me tell you that they may be the least violent group I have ever had to deal with. They are often quiet, painfully introverted, and socially inept, but NOT violent in most cases.

And here let me lay a little more knowledge on you. Just because a child is properly diagnosed with a mental illness of some kind, and receiving treatment, that is NO guarantee that they will not self harm, or harm others.

However it is ABSOLUTELY true that without  access to his mother's arsenal Adam Lanza would have remained relatively harmless. Or at the very least incapable of taking so many lives with such impunity.

So let us not be distracted from the real issue, which is that access to military style weapons designed for the sole purpose of killing human beings is far too easy in this country, and that so long as people who should never have access to them, get access to them, we will continue to see these kinds of massacres for years to come.

When discussing the solution to gun violence, good people may disagree on the importance of gun control laws vs improved access to mental health services. But I think we can ALL agree that keeping guns and the mentally ill separate is a no brainer.

I just read this staggering by the Washington Post this morning:

Adam Lanza lived among guns. 

His mother, Nancy, collected them. She showed them off to her landscaper. 

“Guns were her hobby,” said Dan Holmes, the landscaper of Nancy Lanza’s sprawling yard here on the edge of town. “She told me she liked the single-mindedness of shooting.” 

Holmes said she even spoke of taking her son to the firing range to practice his aim.

The article goes on to detail the mother's fascination of, and perhaps even fetish for, guns.

She apparently collected a variety of weapons, and so far it appears she did so legally, in preparation for the need to protect herself.

She was so comfortable around the guns that she also took her son Adam to shoot them with her at the firing range. The same Adam who was, by all accounts, suffering with some rather severe mental health issues:  

"If that boy would've burned himself, he would not have known it or felt it physically," Novia told The Associated Press in a phone interview. "It was my job to pay close attention to that." 

"He would have an episode, and she'd have to return or come to the high school and deal with it," Novia said, describing how the young man would sometimes withdraw completely "from whatever he was supposed to be doing," whether it was sitting in class or reading a book. 

Adam Lanza "could take flight, which I think was the big issue, and it wasn't a rebellious or defiant thing," Novia said. "It was withdrawal."

And THIS is the child that his mother felt would benefit from learning how to accurately fire some of the numerous readily available guns in his home?

Now contrast THAT with the words of another mother struggling with a child that has mental health issues from an article now gone viral provocatively titled "I am Adam Lanza's Mother: 

"I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me. 

A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7 and 9 year old siblings knew the safety plan—they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me. Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me.

The author of that piece goes on to describe the difficult process of finding appropriate mental health services for her son, and it is a MUST READ in my opinion. 

However I must correct the title of this poor mother's article first.

She is most certainly NOT Adam Lanza's mother, which is evidenced by the fact that the recognized her son's potential for violence and took precautions to keep herself and her other children safe. And SHE was only dealing with knives!

Look I am certainly not going to speak ill of a woman who was murdered by her own son, however in the abstract the idea of living in a house full of guns with a person who is mentally unbalanced is, in my opinion, certifiably insane. (Now from some of the first person testimony we have read there IS the possibility that Nancy Lanza had some problems of her own, but I don't know enough right now to weigh how much that might have affected her judgement.)

I am sure that most of you agree with my statement above, but let me take you down the rabbit hole of mental health services for a moment. (Well at least the rabbit hole that exists in Alaska.)

Rachel Maddow makes the case that it IS the appropriate time to talk about gun control. In fact it is well past the appropriate time. Update!

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Rachel makes some extremely good points in this segment, and also shares some startling facts that should make many Americans simply sick to their stomachs.

Of course it is time to talk about doing something about making guns far less accessible and keeping certain guns off of the streets altogether.

And it CAN be done.

Americans may bristle at the notion of doing anything as aggressive as what was done in Scotland, but how many parents out there would gladly trade away their right to own certain guns for the chance to feel that their children wee safe in their schools? Or in the malls? Or simply walking down the street?

And as for the NRA, well right now at least they seem unsure of their control of the gun control issue.

Salon pointed out yesterday that the official NRA Twitter account has gone silent, as so far today that remains true. Their last tweet was over 24 hours ago.

10 Days of NRA Giveaways - Enter today for a chance to win an auto emergency tool! tinyurl.com/8ufn35h twitter.com/NRA/status/279…
— NRA (@NRA) December 14, 2012

I imagine that they are as shocked as many of the rest of us, and simply do not know what they should say, or when they should say it. At any rate they are in no position to fight back against the idea of addressing gun control in this country.

P.S. I am going to go a little off topic in my own post to share a little breaking news about the shooter's mother and some assumptions that were made that were apparently false.

As many of you know much of the information that we all got originally turned out to be incorrect, including the shooter's name, the death of his father, and where his mother was killed.

And now we have this: 

A former school board official in Newtown called into question earlier reports that Nancy Lanza had been connected to Sandy Hook Elementary School, possibly as part of the teaching staff. 

“No one has heard of her,” said Lillian Bittman, who served on the local school board until 2011. “Teachers don’t know her.”

The belief that the mother was a kindergarten teacher is apparently partly explained here:

A law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity said investigators believe Lanza attended the school several years ago but appeared to have no recent connection to the place. 

At least one parent said Lanza’s mother was a substitute teacher there. But her name did not appear on a staff list. And the law enforcement official said investigators were unable to establish any connection so far between her and the school.

Yesterday may have been one of the most confusing information gathering days that I can remember since 9-11, and what once seemed to fit together no longer does.

But what we DO know is that these children were killed with hand guns that are simply TOO readily accessible in this country. And that is a problem that we CAN start to work on right now, before the next terrible incident has us again asking "when IS the right time to talk about gun control?"

Update: New information has emerged that might explain WHY Adam Lanza chose to target this school. This from Mediaite:

Attempting to answer the question of why Lanza may have chosen this particular school, Williams stated that it has been confirmed now that Lanza’s mother did not work full-time at the school, despite previous reports. 

However, officials told NBC that on Thursday, December 13, Lanza was involved in an “altercation” at the school which involved himself and four other staff members. Of the four, three were murdered in yesterday’s shooting spree and the fourth is currently being interviewed by federal and state investigators.

That is all we know thus far it appears.