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October 13, 2007
"Columbine!" "Gun"! "Noose!" Some hysteria required.
A local 14-year-old named Dillon Cossey and his alleged Columbine-style threats have provided two days worth of front page news, and the incident has become a national story. What I am unable to determine is precisely what the threat was. (It seems to have been related second-hand by a friend who said Cossey tried to recruit him, but the exact words of the threat have not been quoted.) By all accounts, there was no ammunition and his mother had only recently bought guns, one of which she is said to have given him. What the law says about parental supervision, I'm not sure, but it appears the mom violated it. There's a lot of talk about how the kid was bullied in school, and that the parents took him out and homeschooled him. One look at a picture of the kid (at the Inquirer and here, and it's not hard to imagine that he was bullied, at least teased. The kid is morbidly obese. I'm not quite sure how they define bullying (pretty broadly, I think), but there's little question he would have been teased quite a bit when I was a kid. But he wouldn't have gone on a school shooting spree -- despite the fact that guns were more available then than they are now. It wouldn't even have occurred to anyone that this would be a normal response to teasing. In those days, bullied kids fought back. I was the smallest kid in my class, and I had to fight back a few times, but it wouldn't have occurred to me in my wildest dreams to shoot anyone, even though there were guns in my home. Now, the formula seems to be along the lines of bullying plus guns in the home equals Columbine. What has changed? The left blames guns (Michael Moore's "culture of violence" nonsense comes to mind), while many on the right say it's taking the Bible out of the schools. I don't think the Bible has much to do with it, because the Bible was already out of the public schools when I was a kid, yet there were no shootings. I think two of the biggest changes are: -- the huge growth of media culture, which encourages everyone with a grudge to seek his fifteen minutes of fame and glory; -- a bizarre cult of hypersensitivity to all possible threats, real or imaginary, and in which the slightest criticism is seen as provoking a legitimate grievance and engendering a sense of entitlement to victim status. A perfect example is this: DENVER - In an effort to combat the problem of childhood obesity, the Denver Public School District is sending home student health reports to keep parents informed. However, one parent says it should not have been sent home in her daughter's backpack because she read it.Yeah, and report cards cause emotional distress. I'm sorry, but if a kid is dangerously obese and no one can even talk about it, something is crazy. I think media culture and hypersensitivity tend to fuel each other, and the result is a latent hysteria constantly lurking in the background, and ready to break out upon the slightest provocation. Take nooses. When I was a kid, they meant little more than the fact that a boy had learned how to tie them. Personally, I thought they were cool. It's only been in the past decade that I've suddenly been told that they are "hurtful images" like displaying a swastika. (Boys used to doodle swastikas all the time, as most of their dads were World War II veterans. Hammer and sickles were also considered "cool" to doodle when I was a child.) At the rate things are "progressing," pretty soon the mere hanging of a noose would shut down Grand Central Station. Recently, one caused panic in a post office (and it seemed imitative of an earlier one which caused chaos at Columbia): NEW YORK (CBS) ― There was a disturbing discovery near Ground Zero in Manhattan Thursday. A noose was found hanging from a lamppost at the Church Street Post Office. This is just the latest message of hate striking the city.I guess pretty soon all you'll need to do is say the word "noose!" and people will run around screaming in a state of mass panic. Naturally, the ability to create mass panic and fuel media attention leads to copycat behavior: Kelly also said a noose found Thursday outside a lower Manhattan post office could have been the work of a copycat.Maybe they should make it a felony to display the Confederate battle flag -- or even utter the word "Columbine" -- while they're at it. It will all give the ACLU something to litigate. (If flag burning and swastika displays are protected speech, then nooses are also protected, right?) Are rational people really as terrified of nooses, flags, and symbols as they're portrayed as being? Does anyone really and truly believe a piece of rope will hurt anyone? People say they are terrorized, and I think where a noose is left as a threat against a particular individual, it ought to be investigated the way any other threat would be. But I have a problem with the idea that any black person who might see a noose left dangling in a public place is "terrorized." This just makes it way too easy for pranksters to cause huge disruptions over something which basically amounts to nothing. In another interesting wrinkle on hate crimes, a gay man was recently found guilty of hate crimes against another gay man: October 12, 2007 -- A Brooklyn jury yesterday found that a gay man who lured another homosexual to his death last year in a plot to steal the victim's pot was guilty of a hate crime, despite their shared sexual orientation.By the same logic, if a black criminal decided to prey on black victims or a Chinese criminal selected only Chinese victims, this too would be hate crime. I'm guessing also that this would mean that a hate hoax would also be a hate crime. (Maybe even if the hoax were directed by the victim against himself. Well, others were terrorized into a state of hysteria, weren't they?) It's too bad they can't make hysteria illegal. posted by Eric on 10.13.07 at 11:51 AM
Comments
What the law says about parental supervision, I'm not sure, but it appears the mom violated it. Not quite. Pennsylvanian law does not require parental supervision for rifles, such as the HiPoint Carbine that she gave to him (although there are limits on transfers and sales to minors, these were not violated because she was his mother). It does require parental supervision, that the gun be unloaded and in transfer, supervision by an adult with the permission of a parent or legal guardian, or that the gun be in use for legitimate target shooting, hunting, or practice purposes. The .22 handgun has not even been shown to be used by the kid without supervision at this point, with the mother going out of her way to have it out of the home when not being used for lawful purposes! The police reacted like they were going to get a school shooter in the making, realized that the "weapons spread across the room" were all airsoft and that the "grenades" were plastic pellet loaders, and that they now had to cover their own sorry backsides to keep the show going. gattsuru · October 13, 2007 02:03 PM "'It's absurd,' said the foreman, Eric Zaccar, a playwright. '[The hate crime] is a great law when it applies to fat white guys with baseball bats beating up a black man, or gays, or Jews. But when it applies to one gay person seeking out another gay person, it's absurd.'" Wow. I don't think I've ever seen a supporter hate crimes legislation admit so candidly that he only wants it used to stick it to people he doesn't like for being extra-big meanies. Sean Kinsell · October 14, 2007 01:24 AM I'm pretty sure we will find out in a week or two that the friend who sent the police after him made it all up (and might even be one the "bullies" that everyone was worried about.) He had a bunch of hinkie stuff on his myspace, and someone saw an opportunity. Phelps · October 15, 2007 01:48 PM Interesting theories about the case. I think it's significant that it has disappeared from the Inquirer, and there's still been no account anywhere of precisely what this kid is supposed to have actually said, much less done. What was his threat? What were the words? Why aren't they reported? As to the guns, two of them were stored by a neighbor: http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20071013_OFF-TARGET_LOVE.html The law is confusing, but I don't see much of a case that she bought those two for her son. Eric Scheie · October 16, 2007 09:31 AM Post a comment
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Why did the school even send home a note for the obese kid?
Do they think the parents didn't notice?
There is a lot of craziness about in the land.