Sandy Hook Shooting Crisis

The entire country mourned the loss of innocent children and teachers in a senseless act of violence in 2012. A young man walked into an elementary school and killed 20 children and six adults. We have had a rise in gun violence in the United States in the last ten years. In the last ten years we have had a mass theatre shooting, church shooting, and the Virginia Tech shooting are just a few of the mass shootings that took the United States by storm. The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting is considered a crisis and I will use the Life Cycle of a Crisis and Social Media and the Internet Effects of a Crisis to dissect this crisis in detail.
The first ‘step’ in the life cycle of a crisis is the preconditions. This is the series of events
or actions that lead to the cause of the crisis. For the Sandy Hook shooting crisis, I would say that Adam Lanza’s diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder could have been a preconditioning factor leading up to the crisis.
Autism Spectrum Disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder that limits the ability of the diagnosed to communicate well with others and the ability to properly interact with others. Autism Spectrum Disorder was formerly known as Asperger’s Syndrome in the DSM-IV. Autism Spectrum Disorder has a wide range of severity. I think that Adam Lanza suffered from the lack of skills to effectively communicate with others, which may have frustrated him. He could have felt that his family did not understand him nor his condition and often ignored him as a person with behavioral problems, instead of a psychological problem. Another possible precondition could be the fact that Adam Lanza was isolated. He was removed from high school, where he then began home-schooling with his mother. He did not have any friends or have any interactions with other people. People that knew Adam Lanza described him to be extremely intelligent, but displayed nervous and unsettling behaviors. His father said that Adam could have been an undiagnosed schizophrenic whose symptoms were overlooked because of all the other psychiatric diagnoses he had. Schizophrenia is an extremely severe mental disorder where the diagnosed experience hallucinations, delusions, incoherence, and extreme physical irritation. It was said that Adam Lanza took interest in mass shootings and researched information about them constantly. He became estranged from his father and brother and refused to talk to them. He even refused to physically speak to his mother, whom which he lived with. He only communicated with her through email leading up to shooting. Adam refused that anyone enter into his room. After his death, they found that he covered all the windows in his bedroom with black garbage bags and found disturbing research on his computer. After the preconditions, next would be the trigger event that leads to the crisis. The trigger event is the point when the crisis escalates. I think that the trigger event would have been the fact that Adam Lanza was removed from treatment and discontinued his prescribed medications, because his mother did not agree with the course of treatment for her child.
The fact that Adam was not stable and not on any medications could have been a trigger for the crisis. If he was indeed an undiagnosed schizophrenic, the voices he may have heard or the ‘things’ he may have been seeing could have contributed to his mental break and lead to the school shooting. Because of his mental break and his obsession with mass shootings, he carried out his plan. His mother, Nancy Lanza, did not make it difficult for him to gather numerous firearms, because she did not put away or lock away the firearms that she had in her home. Adam was free to take all of the guns and ammunition he needed in order to carry out his plan. My theory is that Adam collected everything he needed to carry out his plan, but his mother got in his way and tried to stop him, resulting in her murder. Since he had already committed one murder, he needed to finish carrying out his plan of action and decided to go five miles down the road to Sandy Hook Elementary School. The mental break and his obsession with mass shootings was Adam Lanza’s trigger event which lead to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting crisis that took place one December morning in 2012.
On December 14, 2012, the world was in shock over the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The shooting was named the second deadliest school shooting in American history.
On December 14, 2012, a twenty year old, Adam Lanza opened fired in an elementary school, after killing his mother earlier that morning in their home. Adam Lanza killed twenty children and six adults from the school. Adam Lanza was armed with a .22 caliber rifle that he used to kill his mother Nancy Lanza in their home. Adam then drove to the elementary school, where his mother worked, and shot his way through the entrance of the school, in order to bypass the new security system the principle had installed. He arrived at the school at 9:30 am. After bypassing the front entrance of the school he open fired on the school counselor, principal, and vice principal. The principal and counselor were killed and the vice principal was injured, he then continued to make his way through the
school. Lanza walks into a classroom filled with children, the lead teacher, and a teacher’s aide. He opened fired killing fourteen children and both the teacher and teacher’s aide. Adam then directs his attention to another classroom and heads in that direction. Once inside of the classroom he kills six more children and another teacher and teacher’s aide. Adam Lanza then turns the gun on himself and takes his own life, as law enforcement agents zero in on him. Police were called once the gun shots rang out in the school.
Police and first responders arrived five minutes later. It took Adam Lanza approximately 11 minutes to kill twenty children, six adults, and himself. The last step in the lifecycle of a crisis is the post crisis. The post crisis is the after effects of the crisis and/or solutions that come after the crisis. The post crisis in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting would be the fact that it started an ongoing debate about gun control in the United States. The shooting also prompted the President of the United States to address the country hours after the shooting took place. After the shooting it also prompted stricter guidelines and background checks for people wanting to purchase firearms. Legislation also put a ban on certain semi-automatic
weapons. Social media played a major role in the facilitation of this crisis. All media outlets across the country covered the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting minute by minute until the shooter, Adam Lanza, committed suicide inside of the school. Because of many inconsistencies in the stories being broadcasted about the shooting, who the shooter was, if there was only one shooter, where the shooter was actually located, and the actual weapon that was used during the shooting, it prompted many people to suggest that the school shooting was some type of government conspiracy. The media has a major influence over people, so when the media reports inaccurate information it can actually ignite an entirely different crisis. I think that because of all the conspiracy theories about the involvement of the government the President had to do damage control because his agency was thrown into crisis mode. I think the President addressed the people of the nation about the mass shooting to try to take the attention away from all the conspiracy theories circulating.