A mother who bought her kid a 9mm carbine has plead guilty:
The mother who bought an assault rifle for her teenage son who was plotting a Columbine-style attack at his high school pleaded guilty yesterday to endangering the welfare of children.
I’m going to guess they didn’t pursue weapons charges, since it’s not actually illegal to buy a rifle for your kid as long as it remains in your possession and control. It would be tough to prove that the firearm was actually transferred to the juvenile. Of course, it seems to be this woman wasn’t buying her kid a gun to teach him responsibile gun use, and his dad seems to have been charged with weapons violations himself, and was a prohibited person. No good was going to come from this situation.
I remember this story back when it first broke. I believe that the 9mm carbine in question is actually a Hi-Point 995 Carbine, which is basically a rifle version of the 9mm Hi-Point C-9 pistol, and both of these are made strictly for the consumer on a budget, not the military. Despite all that, once again we can see how the media likes to call any firearm they think looks scary enough an “assault” rifle, weapon, or gun.
The story in the link for this blog entry was written by somebody named Mari A. Schaefer of the Philadelphia Inquirer. This writer is very likely not at all familiar with firearms, especially considering that the story has the following passage:
“Dillon Cossey was arrested when police found an arsenal, including a 9-mm assault rifle purchased by his mother, in his bedroom. No ammunition was ever found and some officials said no attack was imminent.”
As the rest of you may recall, when this Dillon Cossey kid was arrested, there was a press conference held with much fanfare by Bruce Castor, the District Attorney of Montgomery County. All of the items seized by the police were laid out upon two large conference tables. This is where Mari A. Schaefer of the Philadelphia Inquirer could have actually seen Dillon Cossey’s “arsenal”, which actually consisted of just the unloaded Hi-Point 995 Carbine, with no ammunition for it to be found anywhere, and a plethora of AIRSOFT weapons! For those of you who don’t know already, airsoft weapons fire only little plastic ball pellets and can only cause light flesh wounds and eye injuries at the very worst. A heavy jacket is like ballistic armor to airsoft pellets. I should know – I have been shot several times by such projectiles, and I didn’t feel a thing, all thanks to my motorcycle jacket.
With the above facts in mind, it’s quite a bit of an understatement for the above quoted passage to end with, “some officials said no attack was imminent.” What was the kid really going to do – launch an airsoft shooting spree on some kids who teased him, leaving a trail of minor flesh wounds in his wake? This is why I had to laugh when later on an award was given to the kid who reported Dillon Cossey to the authorities, that is, before the “Columbine-style attack” plot could be hatched, thereby averting another “school shooting tragedy”.