What is the psychology of a person who claims that the Sandy Hook shootings were a hoax?

According to an article in Newsweek.com, 57-year-old Lucy Richards will plead guilty for threatening and harassing Lenny Pozner, the father of 6-year-old Noah Pozner, who died in the Sandy Hook shootings. Richards, who's from Florida, was one of the many Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists who believed the shootings were fabricated.

I asked myself how can any person believe that an event as heinous as the Sandy Hook massacre be a hoax? I just figured that "truthers" were whack jobs, or put more humanly, mentally ill.

Like my son, Ethan, who suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder, conspiracy theorists' brains are believed by some to be wired differently than a "normal" brain. According to psychologytoday.com, conspiracy theorists have an "individualistic" view of the world, and they desperately seek control for situations they have no control over, which brings on major anxiety. Some of the more popular Sandy Hook conspiracy theories are:

  1. Complicit government cover-up
  2. A trick by the government to push through gun legislation
  3. "Truther", Alex Jones, claimed no one died in Sandy Hook because Uniform Crime Reports showed no murders in Newtown in 2012
  4. One of the children was seen in a photo with President Obama after the shootings.
  5. Some claim the shootings were staged using actors

I should mention that Alex Jones has his own far-right wing radio show. In November of 2016, Jones gave his final statements about what happened at Sandy Hook on December 14, 2012. To this day, he still stands by his belief that the Sandy Hook massacre did not take place

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