The police say they are searching Connecticut school shooting gunman Adam Lanza’s home for some clue as to what caused his murder spree and subsequent suicide (“Evidence hints at deadlier plan in Conn. massacre,” Web, Sunday). They ought to take a look in the medicine cabinet.
It is a known fact that most, if not all, of the random school shooters of the past two decades were either on psychiatric medications at the time or had just come off medication. I don’t own a gun and am not a member of the National Rifle Association, but guns have been with us since our nation’s beginning. Random, atrocious shootings in our schools and universities are a relatively recent phenomenon that began with the tower massacre at the University of Texas in 1966.
The increased frequency of these shootings has been paralleled by the increasingly common use of psychiatric medications, many of which have been shown to result in increased violence and suicide. The connection seems so obvious that it is hard to understand why police, school officials and others don’t routinely suspect the use of such medications whenever there is such a mass killing.
LEE TERBUSH
Alexandria, Va.
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