Newtown school shooter = Aspie?

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Great. Like it isn't enough that my roommate routinely likes to tell people that I "have no emotions" since I told her about my Aspergers diagnosis. Now these blowhards in the media are distorting soundbites the psychiatrists are putting out there to portray Aspies as potential sociopaths. Worst of all this is almost wishing me wish that I couldn't feel anything because this shooting has royally pissed me off.

How many gunmen had not been at least suspected of having some form of autism during the last decade?

That's because the shooter, Adam Ryan Lanza, has a similar name to his brother Ryan Lanza, which led to the confusion. His brother has already been cleared of any wrongdoing, but you can't take any chances with this kind of thing, it's just unfortunate that the innocent brother was treated as a suspect.

You cannot discount the possibility that he was an Aspie and overtime his emotional issues morphed into psychopathy. This has been known to happen, albeit it is rare.

That's open for debate.

Ignorance is not an excuse.

The possibility that something like this could be preventable with adequate help and treatment.

Yes, that's true. My ASD brother and I have been discussing this on Facebook, the lack of available care options, but then, this family, at least on the surface of the little information that the media have released, appeared to have the means for that care, unlike a good portion of Americans.

Dear Cosmic Castaway, you have expressed this well...
We all have people who do not understand us and think they do,and every misrepresentation intensifies general mistrust or suspicion of us, or justifies people being uncomfortable around us.
Your term 'blowhard' is exact. Having a degree does not give anyone the authority to diagnose a dead person.
'...portray Aspies as potential sociopaths...', yeah, this gets people to watch the news, and sell advertising, but does NOTHING to help me be better understood by NTs who are subconsciously told that we may be dangerous.

Dear little-black-sheep, 'suspected' is not diagnosed.
Someone who simply hates people in general, or who may have raging paranoia, thinks the lizard-people-aliens are taking over, or whose world is coming apart and decides to take as many people out just because he is evil (Gene Simmons, Leonard Lake, John Allan Muhammed), have nothing to do with Autism or Asperger's.

Sylkat

naaaa... psychopaths have great skills in manipulation and deceit, aspies can never become a psychopath
The quacks usually change the diagnosis from ASD to schizophrenia once something like this occurs
Face it people, an aspie can kill, and do.
What is happening now since Columbine, is copycat shootings by disgruntled loner bullied students, who in no way could be autistic

Kind of similar behaviour to a terrorist bomber, but with a less direct political agenda, but a definite agenda against bullying, none the less

I agree that Aspies are not likely to become psychopaths, but I think it is also not out of the realm of possibility a killer could also be an Aspie. Are we forgetting William Freund?

That being said as the reporting draws on there seems to be a lot of misinformation about Asperger's in the media at this point, and ultimately does it matter whether he was bullied, Autistic, schizophrenic, etc., we will never know what this guys motivation was, and we have over 20 children dead.

Although even if he was bullied killing a bunch of kids isn't going to make your life any better and certainly is not an excuse. So I don't really get where people are going with that. Tons of kids are bullied and don't grow up to be mass murderers either.

I am NEVER coming out.

I'd rather live a lie and be miserable than reveal the truth now and risk a lynch mob.

me too

Aspies usually take their own life, only

Just put 'bullied to death' into the search bar of youtube http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q ... XR7Yn8e4Gg

omg so many poor kids suffer bullying
every now and then its different..........

Dear Disraeli, well-written response, can I point out that many, (most) kids are bullied at some time, to some degree, but some, even as young as eleven years old have committed suicide.

The severity of the abuse, the sensitivity of the victim, the feeling of hopelessness, no escape?
So some people are destroyed by verbal or physical abuse, some feel they are fighting their enemies (Kliebold and Harris), some (most?) survive it and live their lives, albeit carrying bad memories.

Mr. Lanza was not being abused, however, that was in the past, unless there was a possibility of his mother mistreating him, and there has been nothing like that even implied.

Even If he was Autistic, there are seven MILLION of us who are not hurting anyone!

Sylkat

correct
aspies are the ones generally being hurt in schools

I wonder if it will ever occur to the "normal" people that it may not be that people with [insert neurological condition currently being demonized here] are more prone to violence, but that people scorned by society are more prone to violence and people [insert neurological condition currently being demonized here] are more likely to be scorned by society. Thus, scorning people with [insert neurological condition currently being demonized here] will only make this happen more often.

And let's not forget that as soon as something like this happens, every quack with a degree in bigotry rushes to "diagnose" the killer. To ensure the "normal" people that this happened because the killer was "broken" and a "normal" person would never do something like this. You hear that masses? You are better than the people you ostracize! So keep on ostracizing them!

It used to be that anyone who didn't "fit in" could go out and live in the wilderness. It wasn't a very easy option, but it was an option.

But now there is no more room to be alone. There is nowhere to run. There is nowhere to hide. Treat someone like an animal for enough years and that's what they'll become. Antagonize a cornered beast, and what do you expect to happen?

As bad as this was, I am impressed it doesn't happen more often.