Newtown gunman Adam Lanza feverishly edited Wikipedia entries about mass shootings and tried to find ways to turn semiautomatic guns into fully automatic killing machines, according to a new report.
The online habits of the then 17-year-old Lanza are being examined after authorities in Connecticut linked Lanza to a user name that posted on a gun message board, in gaming chat rooms and made edits to Wikipedia, The Hartford Courant revealed.
Showing off impressive technical knowledge of both computers and guns, the user thought to be Lanza also revealed in a post that he had a “fetish” for .32 ACP bullets.
Gun-obsessed Lanza slaughtered 20 first-graders and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012 before killing himself with a shot to the head from a Glock handgun.
Prior to arriving at the school, 20-year-old Lanza shot his mother Nancy four times in the head.
Now state investigators have linked the deranged mass killer to a number of Wikipedia edits and gun message board posts made between April 2009 and February 2010 related to firearms and mass killings, The Courant reported.
In one October 2009 post on a gun message board, Lanza allegedly asks whether Connecticut’s ban on certain semiautomatic pistols would be extended to other weapons, with another user replying that Lanza should contact the police.
“I always prefer asking through proxy when I can avoid speaking to someone directly,” Lanza wrote back, “I was just wondering if anyone knew because I have a fetish for .32 ACP [bullets].”
After revealing his bullet fetish, Lanza returned to the same site in April of 2009 to learn how to modify firearms to make them fully automatic.
“In Connecticut, fully automatic firearms are legal to own but selective fire is prohibited,” starts one post.
“I vaguely recall reading … about a company which alters them to fire exclusively automatically (or something in that vein), but I don’t know how that process works. For example, with whom would I correspond to modify a Title II M2 Carbine that is currently in another state to fire fully automatically before it is sent to Connecticut?”
The Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle Lanza fired 154 times at Sandy Hook is in the same family of guns as the Title II M2 Carbine he asked about in the message board post. Both guns are related to the M16 rifle used by the US military.
During the same 2009 to 2010 time period, Lanza obsessively combed through 12 Wikipedia entries about mass shootings around the world, according to the Courant.
In one revision made to the Wiki about the September 13, 2006 shooting at Dawson College in Montreal where one student was killed and 19 others injured, the user thought to be Lanza testily described the gun the shooter used.
“‘9mm’ was listed as ‘.9mm.’ People say that 9mm is anemic, but this is ridiculous,” Lanza supposedly wrote explaining his edit.
The same user also spent time revising the Wiki entries about both the October 1991 massacre at Luby’s cafeteria in Killeen, Texas when 23 were killed and 20 injured and the Wiki about the 1988 massacre at ESL Inc., in Sunnyvale, California.
Lanza supposedly edited the ESL entry four times in February 2010.
Wearing ear plugs and a vest with over 1,000 rounds of ammunition on it, ESL shooter Richard Farley shot through the glass door of the California software company before gunning down seven people and injuring four more.
Twenty years later, Lanza would shoot his way through the glass front windows at Sandy Hook wearing ear plugs and carrying hundreds of round of ammo on a military-style vest.