"Adam Lanza has been a weird kid since we were 5 years old... As horrible as this was, I can't say I am surprised... Burn in hell, Adam."

A tweet from a neighbor. And:

Nancy Lanza, 54, whom Adam murdered inside the home the two shared, reportedly had worked at Sandy Hook Elementary School. But more recently, she was taking care of her son.

“She needed to be home with Adam,” the family insider said.

I'm seeing a lot of post-Newtown proposals for more gun control — and resistance to these proposals. It's not surprising that each new massacre becomes an occasion to restate positions on gun control, with redoubled enthusiasm.

But why isn't there more talk about institutionalizing the mentally ill? Adam Lanza's mother needed to be home with him? What 20-year-old needs pervasive supervision from his mother? I suspect the mother, who is now dead, had very serious problems of her own. I can't understand her keeping those 3 weapons — pictured at the link — in the home along with a 20-year-old man who — in her view — required her stay-at-home motherhood.

We're so sympathetic to children, and now we're distracted by our sympathy for the dead children, but what about all the deeply troubled young people? Why are we so sympathetic to them up until the point where they act? Or... I mean... why does our sympathy toward the mentally ill take the form of regarding them as socially awkward and weird and leaving them alone?

ADDED: Why did Adam, after killing his mother, travel to the school where she worked? Shouldn't some suspicion fall on the mother? She looks like a victim, but could she and her son have been operating together? News reports say the guns were "apparently" hers, and Adam was buzzed past security at the school because the principal "recognized him as the son of a colleague." If she was a "colleague" and had such a troubled son, why hadn't she conveyed this information to them? If she was staying home from work to deal with his problems, why didn't they know it? What were her issues with them?

UPDATE: Now, the word is that Adam was not buzzed in.

UPDATE 2: The NYT publishes an article about what a "big, big gun fan" Nancy Lanza was.

UPDATE 3: WaPo on Nancy Lanza, who doesn't seem to have worked at the school her son targeted. There was a lot of inaccurate reporting on this incident! My suspicion at "ADDED," above, was largely premised on Adam's going to her workplace. Wouldn't she have been the one with hostility toward that particular place? It wasn't his school. Was her hostility conveyed to him somehow? But if it wasn't her workplace, those questions don't arise. Mysteries remain about what went on between these 2 individuals, and it would be helpful to know whether the mother might have done something to protect the rest of us from her dangerous son. That she failed even to protect herself does not close that door of inquiry.