As a mother of children with learning disorders and one with several of the traits of Aspergers, I am worried that the new national dialogue is painting a very broad brush by lumping all of these into one pot and leading to the misguided notion that maybe all people with these disorders are capable of such atrocities and are, therefore to be feared.
Some people want to make sense of such an atrocity and believe that it could have been predicted and therefore in the future, prevented. The NYT article says his classmates "weren't surprised", but the vast majority of people who do not connect with their high school or town do not do such things.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/n...-is-now-identified-as-a-mass-killer.htmlA Gunman, Recalled as Intelligent and Shy, Who Left Few Footprints in Life
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
New York Times
December 14, 2012
Still, after hearing of the news on Friday, Ms. DeVivo reconnected with friends from Newtown, and the consensus was stark. “They weren’t surprised,” she said. “They said he always seemed like he was someone who was capable of that because he just didn’t really connect with our high school, and didn’t really connect with our town.”
