Drug-induced Murder: What Caused the Connecticut School Shootings?

Drug-induced Murder: What Caused the Connecticut School Shootings?: he Internet is rife with details about the firearms Adam Lanza used to kill 20 children and six adults before turning a handgun on himself at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14. But information about Lanza's medical history is scarce, feeding speculation that he may fit the profile of school shooters under the influence of psychotherapeutic medication.

"In virtually every mass school shooting during the past 15 years, the shooter has been on or in withdrawal from psychiatric drugs," writes Lawrence Hunter of the Social Security Institute. "Yet, federal and state governments continue to ignore the connection between psychiatric drugs and murderous violence, preferring instead to exploit these tragedies in an oppressive and unconstitutional power grab to snatch guns away from innocent, law-abiding people."

School shooters on psychotropic drugs include:

• Eric Harris, one of the assailants at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999, whose autopsy revealed he had a therapeutic level of the antidepressant Luvox in his system;

• Steve Kazmierczak, who killed six including himself at Northern Illinois University in 2008 while in withdrawal from the antidepressant Prozac;