A PS2, Xbox 360 and a Significant Weapons Stash Found in the Home of Newtown Shooter Adam Lanza

Kotaku - “Video gamer.” It was the earliest and most persistent label media outlets placed on Newtown shooter Adam Lanza, after he ruthlessly murdered 20 kids and six adults last December. But that assertion seemed to be based mostly on interviews with people who knew his family, and not hard evidence. After months of speculation, an FBI affadavit is revealing some of what was in the Lanza home and the findings include multiple video game consoles and a cache of firearms.

[NeverEnding1989]

Be on your best behaviour, fanboys.

[Oldman100]

"The whole Sandy Hook tragedy was definitely the fault of the 360. The only games on it are shooters after all. Maybe if it had a varied library of different genres things would have turned out differently? Playing the same types of games over and over would surely turn someone insane. He seemed to be doing fine with the ps2 until he got the ShooterBox 360 no-scope."

Is this the type of response you're looking for?

[Thirty3Three]

HAHA! That made my day :D

If I could 'like' your comment, I would. :)

[raytraceme]

Hit the nail right in the head. Damn 360 creating them killers.

[StreetsofRage]

20 children get massacred and your cracking jokes?

That made your day?

Disgusting. What's sad is that Raytraceme probably meant it judging from his comment history. Look at all those agrees.

Nice work mods.

[extermin8or]

@StreetsofRage- his joke isn't about the actual shooting, his joke is a srcastic comment not just about the article but aimed at the guy that preempted some sort of fanboy argument over what was found (which would be pretty poor in taste tbh) so he's just put what the 1st guy to post was clearly envisaging this thread to become along with a comment to show how ridiculous it sounds yet we all know some moron was thinking about posting something similar but actually being serious about it...

[ThanatosDMC]

I thought this whole Sandy Hook thing was a hoax. Evidence and actors playing parents and supposed dead kids were actually alive.

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[DeadlyFire]

I have DVD player in my house too. Does that make me kill people?

[Gh05t]

Nope but no one said the games MADE him do it Most people are saying that it influenced the doing. Considering no one really knows how deep his mental illness goes saying that video games did not influence this process is ignorant. However so is blaming the video games as the cause or reason.

They are just one piece of the huge puzzle.

[DeadlyFire]

You don't think he got tired of the little kids on XBL kicking his ass and mocking him do you?

I know maybe its wrong to go there.

[3-4-5]

Also found:

Shoes, spoons, forks, dinner plates, a fridge, an oven, a bathroom!!!!

We should get rid of all of these things because of their danger.

[imsocool1234]

Be on YOUR best behaviour, FANBOY.

[Simon_Brezhnev]

I wonder what movies/tv series they found out.

[RE_L_MAYER]

Twilight and brockeback mountain probably

[NeXXXuS]

nah. probably my little pony.

[rezzah]

He was a closet brony.

[RE_L_MAYER]

No no.....teletubbies-that shit will drive anyone insane

[Lazyeye79]

They also probably found food there too, so lets blame food for his crazy nature. And a toilet, definitely the toilet.

[Lone_Man]

the only reason about this mishap was that he didn't want to get socially involved and his parent didnt help him either...

[SJPFTW]

They also found doors in his home. That is right the doors made him do it. better ban those doors.

[B_Rian89]

murderers play video games too, big whoop

[soulrebel]

Personally I blame Mario.

[landog]

kid brushed his teeth with colgate.....hear that induces murderous urges

[BrianC6234]

Are you sure it's Colgate? I thought it was Crest.

[NeXXXuS]

pretty sure it can be any toothpaste. they're all dentist recommended anyways. XD

[dangerousjo33]

lol why even point out he had video game consoles lol. thats like about to be killed by freddy and look down and see hes wearing running shes lol

[Gh05t]

Because it has been pointed out in his writing about what he did and how he viewed it there is a correlation to video games. These writings have not been released yet but news has spread.

However correlation does not mean causation like you are stating, but in this case it may actually be a larger influence than many other cases where games, movies, and music are used as the blame.

Until the final investigation we wont know how much of a causation video games had but in this case even the killer is said to have made note of video games as an influence.

[Themba76]

I should be the most infamous mass murderer known to man then as Iv'e been gaming for 30 yrs. and 80% of my games are shooters ppl need to be frightened to death of me then. look man games had absolutely nothing to do with this. I tell you what does ( I know because I have a mental illness myself which is depression and had it for 20+ years). it's society making him feel like an outcast his parents or family life isn't exactly stable either where is the father at? he probably more of an extravert as far as his emotions is concerned which is commonly associeated with mass murderers.

[dangerousjo33]

oh ok i got ya thanks lol

[dcbronco]

@gho5t

I think the real cause is more the media than the games. The media constantly pushing the idea that games can cause someone to become a killer is ridiculous. Any sane person would ignore it. But we're talking about mentally unstable people in these shootings. If you look at mass murder and serial murderers, you will find long list of reasons. Including dogs giving the order. So to claim video games had any influence is silly. His case is more the media told him it could cause his problem and he was too mentally unbalanced to ignore the media. The mentally ill don't make decisions they play the role they are given.

The main factor and the one the media won't address until people demand it is dealt with is the poor state of mental health in the US. It's why this is a far bigger problem here than anywhere else. We have a government that won't address the issues and citizens who won't take the time to understand the issues.

So I guess the real problem is actually our sound bite culture that refuses to actually learn about anything and just continues to judge based on media blurbs. Video games have been around for a few decades, mass murder has been around for thousands of years.

Hate the cracks in society, not the games.

@Themba76

That is another key point. People that don't fit in societies box are treated as outcast. And sometimes when someone isn't in the tent, they take the ultimate piss into it.

[rainslacker]

Nowadays you'd be hard pressed to find a house without a video game console, or some form of device that can play video games in someone's house. A recent survey suggests that over 80% of American's play games in some way or another.

One could argue he played violent games, but from what I understand his most played game was StarCraft. If he played COD, well you can't say that the other 20 million people that also played it are dysfunctional, because 1 person in that sample pool is a blip in the data that would be ignored by any respectable statistics analyzer.

[Spenok]

This is ridiculous.

[Cam977]

It's really depressing. Is this what the media has become? A money-focused tyrant that doesn't care about something tragic. Yes, and I really don't like it.

Does the writer feel particularly cold towards video games that they have to exploit a heart-breaking tragedy that happened months ago? So what?

He ate McDonald's: THAT IS THE CAUSE OF THE MURDER BECAUSE OF SLAUGHTEHOUSES.

He went to Church: THAT IS THE CAUSE OF MURDER DUE TO INSPIRATION FROM THE BIBLE.

/s

This is ******* ridiculous. Continue to scrape the barrel for '"news", media writers. You're the plague.

[BrianC6234]

The guy was autistic. So I guess we need a law that says autistic people can't play videogames since they don't know killing people like they do in games is wrong? What we really need to do is start dealing with crazy people. All of these killers have some kind of mental problem. But our government wouldn't want to touch that one. It might cost a lot of money.

[Millard]

Firstly what happened at Sandy Hook was horrific and deeply upsetting for every parent the world over. However I really hate the way the media is trying to portray playing video games as the cause. If you walked into every 20 year olds house across America you could pretty much guarantee that most of them would have PS2, Xbox 360 etc. I don't see why consoles are being singled out from other media, such as violent movies, horror books or even violent music as the sole cause of deluding the young. If your going to go after video games then go after the Hollywood movie industry as well because its where most of these violent video games draw inspiration from. Personally I don't think you can blame anything for these individuals actions, unfortunately and very tragically you are always going to have these sorts of events where individuals for whatever reason become withdrawn from society and decide to take their anger and rage out on inoccents.

[Stefanrules7]

Of course gaming causes killings, i mean there were no shootings ever recorded in the world before gaming began. That whole world war thing was started by hitler who was really a gamer who travelled back in time to kill people after being inspired by games!!!

[Jek_Porkins]

Uh oh, looks like video games made someone kill some more people /s

Wonder if he had a television or radio, because those could have just as easily caused an obvious crazy person to kill people.

[extermin8or]

Go raid every other house down that street, hell wihin a 1 mile radius, how many have at least one games console of some kind, with a violent game on it (PC counts) I bet the ration would be about 1:1 if not a greater ratio of consoles per house. Now do a ratio of how many of those households have had serial killers etc within them... Oh wow let me guess you're findings show NO CORRELATION or at best WEAK CORRELATIOn... now go see how many of these killers are suspected/ diagnosed with some form of mental illness, wonder what conclusions that data would leave you. At best I'd expect inconclusive.

[sovietsoldier]

i have a whole set of kitchen knives,what a arsenal.

[rainslacker]

Yeah, somehow I think that "significant weapons stash" probably had more involvement than the guys 360 or PS2.

[cyclindk]

Hope they took a look at his movie collection... or books... or anything else in the world that could be misconstrued as the MOTIVATIONS (not the references) a person has for doing what they do..

[Roper316]

since the media won't blame themselves for glorifying these people with continued coverage & movies/tv shows and or the gun zealot parents like they should they need a scape goat to pass the blame onto, enter video games stage left.

Why is it that all these crazy people have access to guns so easily? Isn't that the bigger problem then some scape goat blamed video game? Maybe watching stories on murder during the evening news lead this wack job to what he did? How come this question / speculation is never brought into the equation? Why because they may find the truth & lose a scape goat that is why!

[kingPoS]

A lot of people been trained to look for the obvious and don't even know it. Most of time, the subtle truth is often overlooked.

Notice how his possible mental illness was mentioned at the end. A fare amount of people would have made up their opinion by the first paragraph. They still haven't substantiated any reason behind the uncommon amount of weaponry.

Whatever those reasons may be, public probably won't find out for a long while... if at all.