Adam Lanza's Shooting Spree
19 Nov 2012

THE SHOOTING DEAD of 26 people, including 20 children, by Adam Lanza, is a terrible tragedy, and our hearts and thoughts are with the families of those victims at this time. Whilst journalists are scrambling for a motive, and gun-control advocates (including myself) are demanding greater control on the sale and ownership of weapons, we must not forget that Lanza, who has serious personality issues including reportedly Asperger's syndrome, was no doubt on a cocktail of psychiatric drugs. But we will never know which ones as prescription details even for mass murderers are protected by law — much to the convenience of the pharmaceutical industry.

Today, one in ten children in the United States (8 million) are on psychotropic drugs, and this statistic is fast catching up the adult figure of 1 in 5, as more and more children are diagnosed with psychiatric conditions. Indeed, in the name of ever-increasing profits, the psychiatric profession is casting its net wider and wider, so that normal behaviour is now regarded as aberrant and in need for psychotropic medication.

The upshot is that America has become a drugged nation, not only for pharmaceutical profit, but because American society itself is becoming increasingly difficult for psychologically healthy people to adapt to. Mental illness escalates in unhealthy environments, and the population needs to be increasingly drugged to help it cope. But this creates a ticking time-bomb — a nation in which the symptoms of mental illness are being masked by powerful and toxic chemicals in an attempt to maintain 'normalcy'. The result is an inauthentic society, out of touch with what it is actually feeling. And most other Western nations are rapidly going the way of the United States in its psychiatric drug programs.

When we are unaware of or blocked from what we are feeling we are much more likely to act out unconscious drives without conscious consideration. This is because feelings are the communication between our unconscious and conscious minds; feelings tell us what is going on at a deeper level, and allow us to make the choice on how to express them. If they are destructive, we can pursue a more symbolic expression, knowing that acting out many destructive feelings can cause great damage to ourselves and others.

So numbing negative feelings and psychological patters can and do have dangerous consequences. We must realize that there are always going to be a percentage of individuals on psychotropic medication that are going to act violently as a consequence, especially in those addicted to fantasy (computer games). Such games allow us to play out negative emotions, but if this is coupled with a disconnection from those emotions due to medication, then this can result in those same negative emotions being played out in real life because of a blurring between fantasy and reality. Add to the mix the easy ability for mass murder with the ready availability of firearms, and you have a potent and incendiary mix.

Many Americans say that guns don't kill people, crazy people do, and they appeal to the Second Amendment — "the right to bear arms" — as the wisdom of the Founding Fathers in advocating an armed civilian population. But what they are missing is that guns provide an easy opportunity for crazy people to kill, and the only reason that most of those in the US first needed to have the right to bear arms is because a fledgling America did not have the resources to have an effective standing army to fight off the oppressive British. But today the United States has the largest standing army in the world and so it is not necessary for it to be militia-enabled.

But doesn't this make it easier for the government to oppress the people if they are unarmed? Actually, it makes it more difficult. This is because government forces are made up of human beings (even though they often do not act as such), and human beings tend to meet violence with violence. The army will always have greater firepower than ordinary people because it has the resources, so if the people are armed, as they are now, the government takes a very heavy-handed approach in how it deals with its citizens, and this makes society feel more like a police state. But if America disarms, even though the government will still have control, it will not be so forceful in how it interacts with the public. Gandhi was well aware of this which is why the non-violent protests he encouraged so quickly brought an end to the British occupation of India. If he had instead organized armed resistance, the outcome would have been very different.

So when Obama says that action needs to be taken, he is right to restrict gun purchase, but he must not forget restricting psychotropic drugs.