With the release of an investigative report by the State’s Attorney for the Judicial District of Danbury in late November, we now have a clear picture of the firearms used by Adam Lanza in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary school on December 14, 2012. We also have a clear picture of the weapons he left at home that terrible day. The difference in the two inventories is telling and belies disinformation frequently put out by the gun lobby about the lethality of different types of firearms.

Adam Lanza, of course, was extremely well versed in weapons, and had been shooting since age four. The Lanza home was a virtual arsenal, with guns and ammunition everywhere. Law enforcement even found a gun safe in Adam’s bedroom.

The following is a complete accounting of all the firearms, magazines, and ammunition that was available to Adam Lanza on December 14, 2012. All of this material had been legally purchased by Nancy Lanza.

FIREARMS

Taken to Sandy Hook Elementary:

Izhmash Saiga 12-gauge semiautomatic shotgun
Bushmaster Model XM15-E2S .223-caliber semiautomatic rifle
Glock 20 10mm semiautomatic handgun
Sig Sauer P226 9mm semiautomatic handgun

Found in Lanza Home:

Savage Mark II bolt-action .22-caliber rifle
Enfield Albian bolt-action .323-caliber rifle
Volcanic .22-caliber starter pistol

MAGAZINES

Taken to Sandy Hook Elementary:

Two 12-gauge shotgun magazines
10 30-round .223 magazines
6 30-round 9mm magazines
6 30-round 10mm magazines

Found in Lanza Home:

Clear plastic Ramline magazine for an AR-15
Three AGP Arms lnc. 12-gauge shotgun magazines (empty)
One Promag 20 round 12-gauge drum magazine
One MDArms 20 round 12-gauge drum magazine
Two AGP Arms lnc. 12-gauge shotgun magazines, taped together, each with 10 rounds
Surefire GunMag magazine with 8 rounds of Winchester 12-gauge 9 pellet buck
AGP Arms Inc. Gen 2 12-gauge shotgun magazine
Magazine with 10 rounds of .223-caliber bullets

AMMUNITION

Taken to Sandy Hook Elementary:

20 12-gauge shotgun rounds
301 rounds of .233-caliber ammunition
116 rounds of .9mm ammunition
90 rounds of 10mm ammunition

Found in Lanza Home:

Five Winchester 12-gauge shotgun shells, cut open, with buckshot
White plastic bag containing 30 Winchester 12-gauge shotgun shells
Box with 20 Estate 12-gauge shotgun shells
Four boxes of SB buckshot 12-gauge, 40 rounds
Box of Lightfield 12-gauge slugs
Six “Winchester” 9 pellet buckshot shells (12-gauge)
Two Remington 12-gauge slugs
Winchester 12-gauge 9 pellet buck
10 rounds of Winchester 12-gauge 9 pellet buck
Planters can with numerous .22 and .45 caliber bullets
Wooden box with numerous rounds of Winchester .45-caliber bullets
Two boxes of PPU .45 caliber auto., 100 rounds
Box of “Fiocchi” .45-caliber auto with 48 rounds
Box of Magtech .45-caliber ACP with 30 rounds
Tan bag containing numerous Blazer .45-caliber bullets
Box containing 400 rounds of Winchester Wildcat .22-caliber bullets
Two boxes of .22-caliber long rifle Blazer, 100 rounds
80 rounds of CCI .22-caliber long rifle
31 .22-caliber rounds
Small plastic bag containing numerous .22 caliber bullets
Full box of Blazer .22 caliber long rifle, 50 rounds
Box of 20 Prvi Partizan .30-30 British rifle cartridges
Box of 20 Federal .303 British rifle cartridges
Box of PPU .303-caliber British cartridges with 9 rounds
Box of 20 rounds of Remington .223-caliber
Three Winchester .223-caliber rifle rounds
Six boxes of PMC .223-caliber, 20 rounds each
Three boxes of Blazer 40-caliber S&W, 150 rounds
Two boxes of Winchester 5.56mm, 40 rounds
Two boxes of Underwood 10mm auto, 100 rounds
Box of Underwood 10mm auto with 34 rounds
130 rounds of Lawman 9mm luger in 3 boxes
Box of miscellaneous 9mm rounds, 29 total
Two Win 9mm rounds
Small box of miscellaneous rounds

When Adam killed his sleeping, defenseless mother as she lay in bed, his choice of weapon was the Savage Mark II .22-caliber rifle, a bolt-action firearm that can accept a 10-round magazine.  When it came time to travel to Sandy Hook to commit mass murder—and potentially expose himself to harm from responding law enforcement—Lanza discarded the Savage rifle and turned to the Bushmaster XM15-E2S, a semiautomatic rifle that he equipped with 30-round magazines so as to cut down on the number of times he would have to reload.

All of the firearms Adam took to Sandy Hook were semiautomatic weapons with detachable ammunition magazines. As with his Bushmaster, Adam equipped his handguns with high-capacity 30-round magazines. Adam elected to leave his Saiga tactical shotgun on the passenger seat of his car, entering the school with just his Bushmaster rifle and handguns.

Left at home were the Lanza families bolt-action rifles, which lacked both the rate of fire and capacity necessary for mass murder.  Lanza also left numerous bladed weapons at home, including eight knives with a blade five inches in length or longer, a “six-foot-10-inch wooden-handled two-sided pole with a blade on one side and a spear on the opposite side,” and three samurai swords.

After the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado on July 20, 2012, National Rifle Association board member Ted Nugent claimed, “You could do more damage with a single shot or a bolt action because he had 20 minutes … His AR-15 Smith & Wesson rifle is now the most popular sporting rifle in America. It is the number one competition, number one in self-defense. It’s the number one sporting rifle for big game and small game. And if they keep calling it an ‘assault weapon,’ I may have that aneurysm.”  Nugent was wrong on several points.  For starters, the Aurora shooting lasted less than two minutes, and police arrived on the scene just 90 seconds after the first call.

But more importantly, despite the gun lobby’s best attempts at marketing, the AR-15 is not a “sporting rifle.” It is a weapons platform that was designed for battlefield use and marketed to militaries around the world for that purpose. The only functional difference between the civilian and military versions of the AR-15 is that the civilian version only fires in the semiautomatic position (and not on full-auto), but that is still a rapid rate of fire—as fast as you can repeatedly pull the trigger.

Mass shooters, of course, are aware of the rifle’s lethality. Adam Lanza, for his part, had complied a “doctoral thesis” of past mass shootings, complete with details on the firearms and magazines used in each incident. Mother Jones conducted an analysis of mass shootings that occurred between 1982 and 2012 and found that more than half of all mass shooters possessed high-capacity ammunition magazines, assault weapons or both.

As Americans, we can have a reasonable debate about the type of military-style hardware that belongs in civilian hands, and why. But that debate should involve an honest accounting of weapons used by mass murderers, which are becoming increasingly familiar.