Sandy Hook Advisory Commission Becomes Irrelevant

What’s the point of the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission? According to the recent article in the New Haven Register, Sandy Hook report unlikely to include analysis of gunman, the Commission has spent twenty-months preparing a report that apparently will not specifically address the mental health treatment received by Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza.

While it’s not surprising that the Commission has decided that “our report is not going to be a deconstruction of Adam Lanza,” this announcement is embarrassing. The Commission was set up by Governor Dannel P. Malloy to make recommendations about a host of issues, including mental health care in Connecticut, based on the tragic incident at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Without specifically addressing Adam Lanza’s mental health treatment leading up to the shooting, one can only speculate whether this entire exercise is simply fulfilling a prearranged mental health and gun control agenda.

Ablechild certainly understands the difficulties associated with obtaining Lanza’s mental health records, as our non-profit sued the state for the records and was arbitrarily denied, based on the state’s opinion that we were not stakeholders. Ablechild, of course, would argue that everyone in the state and throughout the country is a “stakeholder.”

But what are the odds that the state would refuse to provide this information to a Commission set up by the Governor for the specific reason of understanding the shooter’s state of mind at the time of the shooting? It defies all reason and, therefore, makes any “recommendations” of the Commission irrelevant.

For that matter, what are the odds that Peter Lanza, father of the shooter, would deny the Commission information about his son’s mental health? After all Lanza opened up to The New Yorker magazine, providing specific information about Adam’s antidepressant use. The Commission admits that it met with Peter Lanza. If not Adam’s mental health, what exactly was discussed? Really, what could Lanza offer other than information about Adam’s mental health?

Moreover, Advisory Commission Chairman, Hamden Mayor Scott Jackson, explained that although a request was made, the state’s Child Advocate office apparently failed to deliver information about Lanza’s mental health. Is it possible that the Commission could not lean on the Governor to make this happen? It simply defies logic that a state agency would deny the Governor’s request, unless, of course, the Governor, and the Commission, simply has no interest in getting to the answers that might have contributed to Lanza’s violent behavior.

Commission Chairman, Jackson, says the report would “not be an intellectual exercise.” Is this a joke? Based on the fact that the Commission apparently has no intention of including Lanza’s mental health records, “intellectual” is the last thing this report could be called. A waste of time, energy and resources seems a more appropriate description of the Commission’s efforts.

In fact, there seems little reason to even attach the words Sandy Hook as part of the Commission’s title. It should, at this point, simply be referred to as the Governor’s Gun Conrol and Increased Mental Health Advisory Commission.

Without any discussion of Adam Lanza’s mental health treatment, leading up to the shooting, no one can claim the Commission’s report has any relationship to the murderous actions that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The families of the victims and people of Connecticut should be disgusted. They will pay the bill and bear the brunt of the Commission’s baseless “recommendations.” Ultimately, though, one has to wonder what is the “state secret” surrounding Adam Lanza’s mental health treatment?