Really?
I’m not an expert on Pennsylvania law, but as I read 18 Pa. C.S. § 7306, someone is guilty of the crime in question (a misdemeanor, by the way) if he “…owns, manufactures, sells, transfers, uses or possesses any incendiary device…”
There doesn’t have to be any intent to use the device. The mens rea of this offense is limited to knowingly possessing, owning, selling, etc. Possession can be actual or constructive.
Well, I guess it will either come out in the trial, or will not make it to trial (either / or). I wonder, if he had a large amount of stuff, or what. The amount would be really informative.
So if you bought a Estes model rocket, you’re in violation of the law.
I love the fact that the paper reported that he had cylinders.
CYLINDERS!
Step back man, I’ve got a cylinder and I know how to use it!
From one of the links above, 15 kilos of potassium nitrate. 33 lbs or so.
Damn, that sounds like quite a bit! I’d hate to be nearby if it went off.
One might say the same about being a “love it or leave it” annoying asshole.
Potassium Nitrate does not go off. It is an oxidizer. You need to mix it with something else like magnesium dust, or charcoal and sulfur before it can go off.
I’ve a magnesium shelled lawnmower in my garage, some sulfur for the roses, and a little something in my spice cabinet that’d give the mixture an extra kick. In the past, that did not mean that I possessed an incendiary device. Now I wonder if I need to sell my lawnmower and risk a ticket from the weed board.
Come on.
A “little something in the spice cabinet” is a hell of a lot different then 15 kilograms.
Hell, the fact that it was gonna be used for blowing something up or burning rapidly seems to have been verified by the dad saying it was for tree stumps or fireworks.
Maybe lighter fluid?
Why not try making a bomb threat to test your hypothesis?
I re-load ammunition, I have commercially available explosives on my property. I also have loading presses and dies, powder throws, scales, brass, all the other things that go along with re-loading. Nothing wrong with any of it. I don’t have any history of making bomb threats.
Now if I had nothing but the powder, some fuses, and had just scrawled a bomb threat on a school wall, I would be a bit pressed to account for the powder. I might have to resort to tales of stump blasting.
The first thing which struck me about this incident is that no one came forth to finger the lad until a monetary reward was waved. Hired snitches have reduced credibility, IMHO.
Diane Gibbons is a smart attorney, but she needs help with her HazMat. She makes the statement in one article that he had enough to “level a building.” We’re dealing with potassium nitrate-classed as an oxidizer, not ammonium nitrate, as in World Trade Center and Murrah building incidents. Could he have been fashioning bombs? Maybe, but that chemical by itself isn’t sufficient to make me break into a sweat.
So he dosen’t like it here in America. OK. Lots of teens make expressions of disdain for this country. Hell, there are a pile of regulars on this board who make disparaging comments about America.
Nitpick on § 7306 © Definition - As used in this section the phrase “incendiary device,” means any inflammable liquid enclosed in a readily breakable container that can be equipped with an igniter of any kind.
Potassium nitrate is a crystalline solid. The above section refers to what most folks will call a “Molotov Cocktail,” as stated in subpart (a) of the same section.
Duke of Rat are you familiar with the area? You claim that it’s not rural. Although Toll Brothers, et.al. are doing their best to turn all of the rural parcels into half-million dollar and up homes, there are some rural spots which feed that school. It’s the high school which I attended. While I’ll agree that stump blasting is a stretch, without visiting the address of the defendant, I cannot rule it out.
If you’d like to read up on the background, here’s all of the stories to date from the closest paper to the incident.
Personally, I think he’s a bright but troubled kid, but I stop short of calling him Ted-In-Training.
There was a trial. He was found guilty. That’s what the story is about.
Never been there.
From Here
I suppose it could be a sprawling, upper-middle-class rural town. When I think of upper-middle-class neighborhoods, I think of neighbors who would frown on somebody blowing stumps out next door. And when I think of explosions large enough to dislodge a stump, homemade fireworks just don’t seem to cut it.
And my gut feeling? I think he was just experienced enough to make a bang, and was just a kid shooting off his mouth trying to impress his buddies with “I’m gonna blow up the school” talk. He might not have ever done a thing towards that end, or he might have made a bomb and carried it out.
It would have been a lot easier to dismiss it all if not for the napalm selling and the bomb making references. If the police raided his house and found nothing but high-end model rocketry references and some rockets in progress, the possesion of any potential bomb making material would make it all easier to swallow.
When I was a kid I had everything he had, though in somewhat smaller quantities and there were plenty of people who would wrongly finger me for $250. I on several occasions wished out loud that the school would blow up, and would have taken immense pleaure in it actually happening if there was no one inside (didn’t care for highschool), but there wasn’t the slightest chance that I would ever do such a thing.
Also, several people seem to think that he admitted to making bomb threats. According to the article, he reported the existence of the threat in the the bathroom to the authorities. He never actually said he wrote it.
IANAC (I am not a chemist). I guess I showed my own ignorance there.
I just wonder if Mr. Bush plans to tout this incident as an example of “another terrorist captured” by the Patriot Act, given his tendency for vastly overinflating the numbers in his current stump for renewing its sunset provisions.
Ok, as the OP, I’m calling for a moratorium on mentioning Bush in my thread, thanks. I’d rather avoid that hijack.
I seem to recall reading about a year ago that it can be difficult to obtain potassium nitrate in small quantaties(this was an article on making corned beef). Perhaps that would explain why he had so much?
Yay! Like clockwork, rjung shows up to bash Bush in a thread that has nothing to do with it!
Who had 54 posts in the over/under?
A quick internet search shows that I can purchase 25g for $25 from a lab supply house, or 4kg (8.8#) from a model rocketry supplier for $20.
You think overenthusiastically branding a student as a “terrorist” and the President overinflating terrorism arrest records are unrelated?
Can we open the door to some nit-picking here? I’d like clarification on what the newspaper was calling “napalm”, and how he was found to be making it. “Napalm” is a trade name for Dow Chemical’s specific mixture of aluminum naphthenate and aluminum palmitate. There are modern military defoliants which can also be called Napalm, but if he made it himself, odds are very good that he did not make napalm.
If he was mixing styrofoam and gasoline, that’s not napalm. It’s flammable, and it’s sticky, and it’s dangerous. It may constitute “misusing a dangerous substance in a manner inconsistent with its labeling” but that ain’t napalm.
Jesus, next they’ll be arresting people for having a box of Ohio Blue-Tip Matches. Oh my Og!!! An incendiary device!!!