An online video game that reportedly enables users to re-enact gunman Adam Lanza's murderous rampage at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in which 20 children and six adults died, is drawing shock and disgust, forcing at least one website to remove it,
The Hartford Courant reported Tuesday.
The computer game, titled "The Slaying of Sandy Hook Elementary School," takes users through Lanza's Newtown home, instructing them to "Shoot Mother" and "Get AR15 and Clips."
Lanza shot and killed his mother, Nancy, the morning of the Dec. 14, 2012, school massacre.
Gamers then move a virtual gunman through the elementary school, where he uses his weapon to mow down teachers and students, the Courant reported.
Relatives of Sandy Hook teacher Victoria Soto, who was killed in the attack, denounced the game in a tweet to
Ryan Jake Lambourn, creator of the game.
Story continues below tweets.
Lambourn defended himself online. He said the game was intended to promote more stringent gun-control measures.
In a message in the game's credits, Lambourn explains that he grew up in Houston, Tx., a city with a strong gun culture, and later moved to Sydney, Australia, a country with strict gun-control laws.
"Guns are no longer a noticeable part of Australian culture," Lambourn said.
"The liberals don't like me because I've disrespected the dead. The conservatives don't like me because of the gun-control message. The conspiracy theorists don't like me because it risks informing people of what happened. And the trolls don't like me because it wasn't edgy enough," he tweeted.
"Here we are nearly a year after the Sandy Hook shootings in which 26 people were killed and absolutely nothing positive has come out of it," he said.
Sen. Christopher Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat who led the gun-control movement in the U.S. Senate after the Newtown shooting, lambasted Lambourn.
"To make a game about the murder of 20 children and their six teachers is absolutely sickening. I hope the very disturbed person who could think of something like this sees the cruelty of what he's done and stops it," he told the Courant.
In 2007, Lambourn was denounced for creating a game titled "V-Tech Rampage," which was based on the Virginia Tech University massacre, in which Cho Seung-Hui killed 32 students, an Australian newspaper reported.
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