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While I'd normally agree with you, when it comes to autistic children, many of their anger issues aren't your average type of problem.

For many autistic kids, their anger issues come from frustration with dealing with people that they have difficult dealing with. Many autistic children don't see the world the way most other people do; they observe the world and interact with people in a way that isn't natural to the non-autistic. Many of them get frustrated and act out when they can't understand what's going on. It's not your average, "I hate the world and want to hurt people" type of anger, it's more of "I don't understand what you want and I need to tell you that but I don't know how so I'll act out physically."

Many autistic kids (and parents) once they receive specialized instruction, these incidents are drastically reduced or eliminated.

Please realise I'm not talking about your average kids with behavior problems that act out; I'm speaking of children with mental issues.

While "anger issues" are definitely a concern, as nitrogen said, the source/cause is important, and from what I can see seems at least potentially "solvable" with autistic kids, especially as they grow up. As he said, the anger seems to come from problems with communicating and comprehension, not mental derangement. Obviously the anger has to be dealt with, and he needs to learn enough judgement to control it, but most kids have "anger" problems at one point or another, it's part of growing up and they have to learn how to get past it.

Certainly it does not seem correct to say "He's autistic, ergo he can never learn to safely use a gun." Being autistic does not automatically make you a mental paraplegic -- seems more to be a problem with how to learn/process new information and understand concepts.

An interesting insight to autism (and maybe a source of ideas of how to teach an autistic kid something) is provided by Temple Grandin. She is a professor, has a PhD in Animal Sciences, consults on animal management practices for both the government and corporations -- and she's autistic. She's written a couple books on this: Thinking in Pictures, and Animals in Translation. Might try finding those at your local library or on Amazon, it may give some insight into how an autistic kid is seeing the world, and how to present new information to him about anything.

Good luck,

elb