Ambulances, Lanza’s accuracy and controlling the crime scene
The conspiracy video also refers to news camera pictures showing the lack of activity around the school in the wake of the shooting. The answer here is simple: Most of the news crews arrived long after the action was over. The famous photo of a teacher leading a line of children was taken by the Newtown Bee, the local paper and apparently the first and only reporters on the scene for a time. The video says that there are “no ambulances” while simultaneously showing a video in which ambulances are clearly present. By the time video news crews reached the scene reached the scene, the children had already been removed from the school, to the fire station if they were uninjured or in ambulances if they were. NBC News reports that ambulances were even called in from neighboring towns, but most were unused. The majority of the victims were dead, not injured.
Adam Lanza’s accuracy has also been questioned due to reports that all victims had multiple wounds. The Hartford Courant reports that Lanza was a frequent player of first-person shooter video games and, according to MSNBC, he was familiar with guns and marksmanship. Children in the classrooms with one door had little room to escape. Many of the bullet wounds were probably inflicted after the victim was already dead or injured and unable to run.
Conspiracy buffs have keyed in on a comment about “controlling” the scene by Connecticut’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Wayne Carver. A full transcript of Carver’s comments indicate that he was talking about controlling access to the crime scene to spare the families more emotional distress.
Carver’s full comment was, “We did not bring the bodies and the families into contact. We took pictures of them of their facial features. It’s easier on the families when you do that. There is a time and a place for up close and personal in the grieving process. But to accomplish this, we felt it would be best to do it this way, and you can sort of – you can control the situation, depending on the photographer and I have very good photographers.” This explains why the parents were kept from the crime scene and not allowed to see the bodies as well as why any closed circuit camera images have not been released.
Bridgeport FEMA conference
Conspiracy sites have also pointed out that FEMA was holding a conference in Bridgeport, Ct. on the day of the massacre. The topic of this sinister conference? “Planning for the needs of Children in Disasters.”
The location of the conference was not on the same road as Sandy Hook as some sites claim, although Highway 25 does connect both towns. According to Yahoo Maps, the two locations were 20 miles and about half an hour apart. It should be remembered that Connecticut is a small state with an average length of 90 miles and width of 55 miles. This means that the conference in Bridgeport was halfway across the state from Sandy Hook.
None of this is in the least incriminating or suggestive of FEMA involvement in the shooting. In fact, the Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection calendar reveals that the same course was offered a total of four times in December. On the days of three of the four classes, no mass murders occurred.
Dates on internet postings
One of the last conspiracy items is the claim that news stories and Facebook pages about the murders were posted to the internet before the shootings actually occurred. This is based on dates posted on Google search results.
To see the fallacy in this theory, go to Google.com and type in a search term, something along the lines of “Sandy Hook shooting.” Click “search tools” in the menu below the search field. Click the arrow beside “any time” to open up a time range menu and then select “custom range.” Select a date range before the Sandy Hook shooting to search, for example, you can search the dates between January 1 and December 1, 2012. The results show news stories about the Sandy Hook massacre from as early as Jan. 14, 2012, far beyond the day or so early claimed by the conspiracy buffs. When dates are expanded, search results dating back to 2007 and 2008 can be found. This should be too early for even the most ardent conspiracy believers to justify as secret operation.
A similar search on Bing does not yield similar results. Bing does not offer custom date range searches, but after scrolling through many pages of search results, nothing prior to Dec. 14, 2012, the day of the shooting was found. The same is true of other search engines including Ask and Yahoo. Obviously, there is a flaw in Google’s methodology.
Without a doubt, President Obama and the Democrats are using the tragic murders at Sandy Hook for their own political ends. There is no evidence that they actually carried out the shootings or orchestrated a hoax of any sort. They didn’t need to. Mass murders happen on occasion and this one, happening just after the election, came at an opportune time.
A hoax would have been much smoother. They would have hired actors who knew how to cry. They might have set up websites in advance, but they would not have activated them, much less more than one, before the shooting. Eyewitness testimony would have matched. In reality, conflicting testimony is not a sign of a hoax because people perceive things in different ways and remember things differently. Stories that match up perfectly are more likely to indicate that the testimony was planned in advance.
For Sandy Hook to be a hoax perpetrated by the government, the conspirators would have to be exceedingly incompetent. They would have had to execute the killings and plant Adam Lanza as a patsy, but forget to plant the AR-15 on his body. They would also have to inexplicably put one of the “dead” girls in a photo opportunity with the president and launch websites several days early. Actors portraying the parents would have to all be so incompetent as to forget their roles on camera.
In any unfolding news story, there is a lot of erroneous information at the beginning. The “fog of war,” conflicting information coming in from different sources and all presented as fact, means that some of the early information is not true. The news media are not intentionally lying; they are just reporting the story as they know it at the time. When this information is corrected later, it isn’t a hoax or a cover up; they are just setting the record straight.
As with any conspiracy theory, the best solution is to apply Hanlon’s razor to conspiracy claims about Adam Lanza and the mass murder at Sandy Hook. “Never accept for malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
This is part three of a three-part series.
Read part one here: "Myths, lies and conspiracies about Sandy Hook"
Read part two here: "More myths, lies and conspiracies about Sandy Hook"
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