"Can we blame the mother of Adam Lanza... Can we blame the mother of the Oregon shooter...?"

Asks Timothy Egan in the NYT.

What about the fathers? Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana said the Oregon shooter’s father, divorced and absent for some time from his son, was “a failure” who “owes us all an apology.” Fathers certainly have an equal responsibility. But it’s the mothers, in most cases, who know the names of their children’s teachers, who understand their deepest fears, who have a unique relationship.

Hmm. The "unique relationship" the mother has is a consequence of the father's failure. If the point is to stop future harm, then all causal factors matter.

But Egan is doing gender politics and advocating for gun control. He's getting the NYT reader's attention by beginning with something transgressive. He dares to blame the woman. But then he drives a wedge, the wedge that men have driven through the ages: There are good women and bad women.

A group, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, was formed after the Newtown carnage. It’s a good counter to the creepy cultists of the gun culture. Their best appeal is likely to be one of reason to the hearts of fellow mothers, rather than to heartless politicians at the legislative level.

The bad women consort with the dirty men, the "creepy cultists." The good women have "hearts" — they are the wholesome bulwarks of goodness.

When a man makes an appeal to the womanhood of women, to the motherhood of mothers — be a good woman, be a good mother — that is patriarchy speaking.