Professor Claims Newtown Shooting Was Likely Staged
A professor from a Florida university speculates that the Newtown massacre may have been "constructed."
In a series of blog posts since last month's shooting that left 28, including the gunman, dead in Connecticut, James Tracy lays out his case that there have been too many conflicting reports and ambiguity surrounding the massacre.
"...what has been revealed and captured in press reports suggests how from missing suspects and evidence to unrevealed corpses much is still unknown and mainstream news outlets have been at least complicit in what could conceivably be described as the Sandy Hook massacre's constructed reality," the associate professor of Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University wrote at memoryholeblog.com last week. "In this way unseen and largely unaccountable authorities set the agenda of the reportage through a titillating storyline reliant on an unsettling symbolic landscape to further develop and cultivate audience credulity."
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"Regardless of where one stands on the Second Amendment and gun control, it is not unreasonable to suggest the Obama administration complicity or direct oversight of an incident that has in very short order sparked a national debate on the very topic-and not coincidentally remains a key piece of Obama's political platform."
FAU has distanced itself from Tracy's comments.
While some who have commented say Tracy has brought up valid points, others are appalled.
"This is a sickening manipulation of horrific events to correspond to what from my perspective is a warped – perhaps even mentally ill – view of the world," wrote commenter Christopher Joiner.
Tracy, whose blog represents his personal views only and not that of the university, first began blogging about inconsistencies in reports about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting a week after the Dec. 14 tragedy.
Some of the inconsistencies he has listed include: initial reports and recorded police radio calls of multiple suspects at the scene though the accepted story now is that there was only one gunman; initial reports also indicated that the gunman used pistols at the school and that a rifle was found in the suspect's car though later police said only a rifle was used for maximum killing at the school; though the gunman fired rounds into the school glass doors, it reportedly wasn't until after he began firing inside the facility that school personnel or students heard gunshots and called 911; and only an "extremely skilled" gunman would have been able to shoot as many rounds as he did in less than 10 minutes.
Tracy also finds it odd that there is no photo or video evidence of the incident, considering the school had a new security system installed. Additionally, medical examiner H. Wayne Carver II, according to Tracy, tends to go to excessive lengths to demonstrate his findings and expert opinion but during a press conference about the autopsies he performed on the victims, he was vague, "amateurish" and "out of character," the professor claims.
Most recently, authorities have delayed the public disclosure of items they retrieved from Adam (gunman) and Nancy (mother whom he shot) Lanza's residence.
Tracy claims that the media is helping to further "larger political ends."
"While it sounds like an outrageous claim, one is left to inquire whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever took place - at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nation's news media have described," he writes.
"To declare that the shooting 'never took place' is cause for intense opprobrium in most polite circles where, in familiar Orwellian fashion, the media-induced trance and dehistoricized will to believe maintain their hold. Similarly, an individual who contends that Timothy McVeigh was an accessory in a much larger operation at Oklahoma City, Osama bin Laden was not responsible for the events of 9/11, or the World Trade Center Towers were brought down by controlled demolition is vigorously condemned for thought crimes against the state. Such are the immense dimensions of mass manipulation where fact and tragedy may be routinely revised and reinforced to fit the motives and designs toward a much larger apparatus of social and geopolitical control."
Lisa Metcalf, FAU's director of media relations, told FoxNews.com, that Tracy does not speak for the university.
Twenty first graders were killed in the Newtown shooting along with seven adults, not including the gunman. The gunman has been identified as 20-year-old Adam Lanza.
Conn. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has set up a commission that will make recommendations on public safety, mental health and gun violence prevention.
