Why do many of the media reports about Sandy Hook not include the mother in their count?

It is interesting, yes.
Poor woman…she knew something was dreadfully off about her son and she was, every bit as much of a victim as everyone else. I find it appalling to not include her as well.

Once it was realized that she had made the guns available, she was left out of the body count. So was Lanza himself. She could have mitigated this massacre by not having guns, not collecting guns, or keeping them where her son could not get them. Since she was afraid of her own son, yet did not keep the weapons away from him, many consider her complicit and not an innocent victim.

I agree about her keeping weapons knowing her son was disturbed, but…at the same time, I don’t think any parent ever, truly expects their own child to murder them. I don’t even know if I’d call it denial, just that it is such an alien and horrific thought and when we love people we tend to give the benefit of the doubt. The whole thing is just sickening.
I had a neighbor about 12 years ago whose teenage son beat her to death with a garden shovel over a fight about taking the family car.

I doubt, no matter how much they were trying to intervene with their sons behavioral issues that the mother ever once thought her gardening hobby would be the death of her at the hands of her child.

It was personal with them rather than a stranger shooting.

It might be that the articles are focusing on the events at the school, which do not include the killing of Lanza’s mother. Her death was part of Lanza’s killing spree, but not part of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings.

Note also that you left out Adam Lanza, who is himself a victim of the overarching tragedy that includes his killing spree. The same thing happened to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (the Columbine shooters).

We might interpret this as people refusing to acknowledge that shootings like these are just one part of the problem, but it is also in part the fact that the shootings constitute a distinct event that can be talked about separately from the larger story.

@SavoirFaire you are right about leaving Lanza out. I thought about him but can reason out why he is not included in the accounting done by news agencies and perhaps that is one of my own personal bias’

In my opinion it is because they are counting what occurred at the school, and the mother was not at the school.

I haven’t read any articles that don’t include the mother’s death. All that I’ve read or watched on television have reported all the deaths.

@bkcunningham The details acknowledge that it’s not universal. The question is why it happens in those instances where the mother is left out.

Thank you @SavoirFaire. I was answering in between checking on my supper cooking and didn’t think or read completely before answering.

I’d say it is poor journalism if they don’t report all of the deaths. Maybe you could find one of the articles you’ve read where they didn’t include the mother in the count and link it here for us. I’d be interested to see if they mention her as a victim outside the dead killed on the school property.

To say the killer is a victim is a different way to look at the murders, @SavoirFaire.

@bkcunningham Well, Lanza is certainly one of the people that Lanza shot—just as Dylan Klebold is one of the people Dylan Klebold shot and Eric Harris is one of the people Eric Harris shot. But note that what I said was that these shooters are victims of a larger tragedy, one that could be considered distinct from the killing sprees they go on. They are victims of this overall tragedy despite not being victims of murder.

I realize you said they were victims of a larger tragedy and you didn’t elaborate further. I think of a victim as a person who is harmed or killed by another. Not someone who harms or kills themself.

@bkcunningham It seems to me that people can be victims without being victimized by other people. Otherwise, we would not be able to say that there are any victims of depression (for example). I take people like Lanza, Klebold, and Harris to be victims of what are ultimately social tragedies, however, so perhaps we could still cash it out in terms of “being harmed by another.”