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On the heels of last week's school shooting, the media barely had time to stop and grab a fresh cup of coffee before the next kids-with-guns story was front and center, albeit this time with a twist: Michele Cossey was arrested for buying firearms for her 14-year-old son.
The story has all the earmarks of both the kind of both the outrage we love (oh, what a terrible mother she must be!) as well as the relief we crave (oh, thank goodness, crisis averted). And all the while, the media has chosen to zoom in on the mother's participation as the crucial plot point. Granted, it is a switch, a situation where there's no question of a parent's culpability -- particularly in a world where so many school shootings have left us asking, "Where were the parents?"
Over at Crime Rant tongues are firmly planted in cheek:
Mrs. Cossey bought her home-schooled son, Dillon, a .22-caliber handgun, a .22-caliber rifle and a 9 mm semiautomatic rifle, authorities said. According to press acounts, the teenager felt bullied and tried to recruit another boy for an attack at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School in suburban Philadelphia. Three weapons? Why didn’t she just get her son an Ipod or Halo-3 like all the other put-upon moms in America?
The sarcasm is duly noted, but there's a note of insidious truth in there. This notion that mothers are beleaguered and give in to children's whims just to get a little peace... it's a pervasive belief. Is it true? I want to believe that it's not, but that becomes a hard position to support in a society full of spoiled kids and, yes, kids whose moms are buying them guns because they want them.
Commenter TXMichelle goes one better:
The boy was picked on because he was exceedingly overweight. Mom has done this boy a disservice on several levels. I am guessing she gave him comfort foods too. I cannot begin to imagine what excuse he could have given her to prompt her to purchase a rifle with scope. Mom is in serious denial.
I'm not sure how the conversation about her involvement in purchasing weapons became an indictment of her parenting because her son is overweight, nor am I certain how I feel about this line of reasoning.
Dr. Jim West asks the question that was lurking in the back of my mind, which is where is the father in this story?:
Police said Frank Cossey was sentenced to house arrest for failing to acknowledge a 1981 manslaughter conviction when he tried to buy a .22-caliber rifle for his son in 2005, The Associated Press reported.
Ah, so that’s the example. Makes sense, doesn’t it. Children aren’t the problem, their parents are. You have to get a license to drive, to marry, to be buried, to fish or hunt; but the most important human responsibility of all, the raising of responsible children who become responsible citizens is left to people who don’t have enough sense to raise a goldfish.
Precious.
(At least he takes the time to consider the father as well.)
Lawmummy is quite clear and succinct in her opinion on this case:
She has been charged with a crime. She should go to jail. She should lose custody of her child.
There is zero excuse for this. Zero.
There's a part of me that agrees, and then there's a part of me that thinks this is a very slippery slope. Are we going to take custody away from every mother who ever made the wrong choice regarding her child? Are we going to remove custody just when guns are involved? Where would we draw the line? I don't know the answers to these questions. I know that something horrible happened here -- on several levels -- but mostly I feel a profound sadness for Dillon Cossey. Is Michele Cossey to blame for the dark and disturbed place where he ended up? Enough so that she deserves to have him removed from her care? Do we mothers really have that much power?
Susan Young questions how Michele Cossey could've "overlooked" all the signs of what was happening with her son. She notes all of the warning signs which she believes she would've seen, as a mother, had they occurred with her child. In the end, though, she ends her post with compassion:
I believe the Cossey family is in a terrible situation. My heart goes out to them on some levels. On others I am
