I think most of us civilians would consider a personality disorder a kind of mental disorder -- or something more like a mental birth defect. It's only for the purposes of being able to lock someone away for life that I can approve calling it something else.

The coverage of Columbine (and every school shooting thereafter) was appalling. If we keep making rock stars out of these toe-rags, we're going to get a LOT more of them.

I would argue that if it were fully under their control, they would control it. The adults, anyhow. I wouldn't at all be surprised if better brain scanning ultimately leads us to find that criminality has to do with a visible, measurable lack of that which governs impulse control.

At first blush, this looks pro-criminal -- poor babies, they can't help it. But it's the opposite: if they are physically incapable of learning to conform and we have no mechanisms to change that, we are obliged for the good of society to lock them up (at least) and throw away the key.

Even thornier -- if we know what criminality looks like before it happens, how temped are we going to be to punish people who haven't actually done anything yet?

The libertarian in me shrivels up like a spider on a hotplate over that one.

I'm not a free will absolutist; I don't think everyone finds it equally easy to make good choices. It doesn't make sense to me that talent or intelligence might vary, but everyone is temperamentally identical. A man with a bad temper and a good character can learn, by force of will, to control himself, but he'll still be a man with a bad temper. He will always be at a disadvantage in this regard to the man who is naturally phlegmatic (however much the latter may congratulate himself on the excellent choices he makes).

I'm largely a materialist: I think the differences between people lie in brains or hormones or other organic and measurable physical differences. Whether a brain configuration that makes impulse control more difficult is an "illness" or not is...a different conversation.

10 pounds of ammonium nitrate is considered a “weapon of mass destruction”?

Hey Mac-agreed-ammonium nitrate, ten pounds of the stuff properly processed, could make a decent little bomb. But, a gallon of gasoline weighing a few pounds less could also do a lot of damage-is gasoline now a WMD too? This kid appears to have some problems, but I have to wonder at the state lobbing out this WMD charge absent any radioactive or biological components or substantial amounts of explosives; it trivializes the whole idea of WMD.

And when you have more than one or two guns, it becomes an armory or an arsenal. A thousand rounds of ammunition? And if you do your own reloading, you are bound to have the makings for several WMDs.

Words have meaning; it makes me nervous when the state starts trying to make something sound worse than it is.

Sorry Stash; I know this wasnt the point of your post-I seem to sidetrack easily.