A southwest Missouri man accused of plotting attacks at a movie theater and Walmart store legally bought the guns he allegedly planned to use, despite being forced to undergo a psychiatric exam three years ago after stalking a store clerk he said he planned to kill, authorities said. Blaec Lammers, 20, was arrested last week after his mother told police she feared he was planning an attack. Authorities say Lammers told investigators he planned to open fire during a showing last weekend of the new "Twilight" film and then inside a nearby Walmart in Bolivar, a town about 130 miles southeast of Kansas City.

Investigators determined he legally purchased two assault rifles, and also had 400 rounds of ammunition. He is charged with first-degree assault, making a terroristic threat and armed criminal action, and remained jailed Wednesday on $500,000 bond. The case has gun control advocates concerned. Daniel Vice, a senior attorney for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said Lammers' case reminds him of what happened before the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007. Student gunman Seung-Hui Cho, who fatally shot 32 people before killing himself, was able to buy two guns even though he had been ruled a danger to himself during a court hearing in 2005. "We've seen it before," Vice said. "We've been trying to fix this." The National Rifle Association didn't respond to a phone message seeking comment. Lammers' attorney, DeWayne Franklin Perry, declined to comment about the case.

Lammers' mother said her son had undergone inpatient treatment and has shown signs associated with Asperger's syndrome, borderline personality disorder and other conditions. "He didn't ask to be born different," Tricia Lammers said at a news conference this week at the National Alliance for Mental Illness in Springfield. "He wanted to be successful and be somebody. Just two weeks ago he asked me — both my kids still call me mommy — he said, 'Mommy, do you think I'm a failure?' I said, 'No, Blaec, I don't.'" Federal law has banned certain types of mentally ill people from buying guns since 1968, including those who have been deemed a danger to themselves or others, involuntarily committed, or judged not guilty by reason of insanity or incompetent to stand trial.

Lammers was involuntarily committed in 2009, after he brought a knife and rubber mask to a Walmart store and followed around a clerk, according to an arrest report. Lammers, who was 17 at the time, told investigators he was planning to kill the clerk when he heard his name over the public address system and his father hollering at him. He wasn't charged, but he was involuntarily committed for 96 hours for a mental health examination. In Missouri, hospitals, law enforcement officials and private citizens can request a person be held against his or her will for up to 96 hours if the person appears to be a threat to themselves or others. But such an involuntary hold doesn't necessarily bar someone from purchasing a firearm, because the federal law requires that a person be "adjudicated as a mental defective," said Trista K. Frederick, a special agent and spokeswoman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms office in Kansas City.

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Like hitmen.

You could never pay me enough/any money to take another human life.

Except in self-defense or as a soldier in a war.

I don't think so. I think babies are born with an empty slate, their upbringing and circumstances pretty much determine their personality by the time they're 10 years old. I do think people can change after that, but it ain't easy.

why the inevitable video rdean? ,,,, why not a human answer?

They're a tabla rasa.

"We first kill people with our minds, before we kill them with weapons. Whatever the conflict, the enemy is always the destroyer. We're on God's side; they're barbaric. We're good, they're evil. War gives us a feeling of moral clarity that we lack at other times." Sam Keen

Children are not blank slates, I do not claim to be the greatest observer of humankind but anyone who has watched babies, infants, grow, witnesses behaviors, fears, activity and especially language as part of the biological person. Watching my first granddaughter talk and talk and talk even though none of it was intelligible demonstrated for me the innate gifts of humans. Evil though requires context, experience and a whole panoply of interactions and development. It requires especially background as the Holocaust should demonstrate to anyone. Consider too Racism. Remember Cain and remember too the concept of Original sin. Now explain empathy and its opposite. Or the Golden rule. It is a topic I have read lots on and offer a few sources below. In my database of stuff I have a listing titled Evil.

Excellent piece. Philip Zimbardo: The psychology of evil | Video on TED.com

and if you read: Amazon.com: Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing (9780195189490): James Waller: Books


Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy: Inside a school for suicide bombers | Video on TED.com

'A replication of the famous 1961 Milgram Experiment has found that the majority of people will comply with orders to administer painful shocks to an innocent person. Recreated Study Finds that People Still Willing to Torture Others


"The main hypothesis concerning group-think is this: the more amiability and espirt de corps among the members of an in-group of policymakers the greater the danger that independent critical thinking will be replaced by groupthink, which is likely to result in irrational and the dehumanizing actions directed at out-groups." Irving L. Janis 'Sanctions for Evil' [old but interesting read]

"The rhetoric about hatred, about mistrust of government, about paranoia of how government operates — and to try to inflame the public on a daily basis, 24 hours a day, seven days a week — has impact on people, especially (those) who are unbalanced personalities to begin with." Sheriff Clarence Dupnik

"Terrorism require alienated individuals, a complicit community, and a legitimizing ideology motivated by a desire for revenge, renown, and reaction from the enemy." Louise Richardson

"The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbors as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant of others when we tolerate ourselves." Eric Hoffer

See also: 'The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature' Steven Pinker

Where does evil come from?

I think evil requires a knowledge of right and wrong, and no one is born with that.