Nancy Lanza

Nearly one month after the Newtown, Conn., shooting, the official police report on the crime scenes is nearing completion, and a police spokesman tells the Daily Beast's Diane Dimond that there will be some shocking, eye-opening conclusions that counter much of the media' faulty initial reporting. 

One such piece of misinformation was the early, egregious rumor that the shooter's mother, Nancy Lanza, was a survivalist or "doomsday prepper," a paranoid hoarder obsessed with what she considered the imminent collapse of society. In a January 7 post at the Daily Beast website, Dimond quoted a Lt. Paul Vance of the Connecticut State Police debunking that notion and saying a forthcoming police report will help to dispel urban legends that have crystallized in the public imagination:

The hard-left gun abolitionists are feeling their oats lately. Buoyed by the president's reelection and his hinting strongly that he will pursue gun control legislation in the wake of the Newtown mass murder, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas offered yesterday "Some thoughts on the coming gun debate" which essentially boiled down to a call to make illegal a broad array of guns that are right now perfectly legal and used daily by law-abiding Americans to protect their homes: rifles and handguns that are semiautomatics with detachable magazines.

"[I]f I were the benevolent dictator of this country, I'd simply outlaw guns with magazines. That would leave plenty of guns for people to hunt with and defend their homes," Moulitsas insisted. Of course, banning all guns with magazines would instantly make Granny's 9 mm semiautomatic pistol illegal. Sure, she may opt for a revolver, but generally speaking that means she's going to have less rounds to work with in a home defense scenario, not to mention stronger kickback. But really, in Moulitsas's mind, if you are a gun owner, like the shooter's mom was, you were probably a paranoid freak who deserves to be shot: