The sun was coming down over the barbed-wire fence surrounding Will and Josh's gloomy new home, a juvenile detention center outside Newport. Behind the two-story chain-link fence that encircles the brick buildings, a stocky guard slowly led a group of prisoners across the pavement. Two rows of tough kids -- murderers, sex offenders, drug dealers -- walked single file behind him. Yesterday, a kid came in after shooting his dad in the face.

It was last February, and I was sitting outside the fence in the parking lot with Wayne and Donna, who were finishing their last cigarettes before walking inside to see their sons. They had been coming promptly for each allotted visit -- one hour every day but weekends and Fridays. Over on the basketball court behind the fence, we could see Josh braving the cold to squeeze out a few more minutes of hoops. Despite the chill, he was wearing only a green short-sleeved T-shirt and long baggy black shorts. As a couple of taller kids hogged the ball, he lagged behind them, quickly rubbing some heat along his arms with his hands before they turned around. "I worry about him in there," said Donna. "He's a lot smaller than the other kids."

Life inside the juvenile center was hard for the boys from the start. Will and Josh were assigned to separate 6-by-8-foot cells. They spent the day taking classes. Lights out by 6:30 p.m. Their parents couldn't get them anything to help bide the time. When they requested Bibles for the boys, they were told no; kids use pages of the Bibles to roll smokes.

According to Wayne and Donna, Josh soon stopped taking his ADHD medication because the other kids were stealing it from him. Josh, however, had been known to willfully decline the medication in the past. With his hyperactivity unleashed, he started getting into trouble, talking out of place, showing up at visitors meetings without wearing his requisite uniform. One day he was caught piercing the tongues of a bunch of other kids with a shared thumbtack.

Will soon stopped playing follower to Josh's leader. Unlike Josh, Will had few infractions. He began doing well in school and was on the fast track to getting out. Last July, Will was transferred to a much less punitive group home facility. Josh soon began shaping up his act and was transferred to a separate group home last November. With good behavior, the two may eventually take the next step and be released for good. If and when that happens, however, the stepbrothers will not be sharing a house again. According to Donna, "the judge doesn't want the boys back together." When Will walks out the door, she said, she plans to move with him out of state, leaving Wayne and Josh behind. It doesn't seem as though there will be love lost between the boys. "Josh is going to pay for some of the things he's done in here," Will told his mother without elaboration.

That's not all that's changed in Will's mind, Wayne and Donna learned after they passed through the metal detectors to see him that cold February night. With guards standing watch, Will sat at the table in his uniform, exchanging greetings with his parents. After a bit of small talk, Donna looked him in the eye. "You've had a lot of time to think about what you've done," she said. "Do you still think it was a video game that made you do this?"

Will sat up and became emphatic. "It wasn't the game that made us think to go out and do this," he said, bitterly. "We wanted to do this. The idea was to act out the game. But the game didn't reprogram our minds." When asked to elaborate, he just repeated that phrase: "The game didn't reprogram our minds." And he said he wished the lawsuit against the game's makers had never happened. With Will's time up, the guards came and took him away.

Would Will and Josh have done what they did if it hadn't been for the game? While researchers try to discover whether there's a link between violent media and aggression, the truth is that it's impossible to say why the Buckners pulled the trigger that night. Ideas come from the most random of places, and violence has certainly been inspired by the most random of things, from the "White Album" to "Catcher in the Rye." Even if Will and Josh hadn't played "Grand Theft Auto III," who knows what else might have inspired them to break out the .22s.

Whatever the reason, it was, as Will suggests, surely much more complex than a game -- and to suggest otherwise is to deny the experience of so many kids like these. Maybe it was a broken home, death, rejection. Maybe it was bad biochemistry, bad grades, dumb mascots. Maybe it was the overwhelming dread of being stuck with nothing left to do. Maybe bullets fly from nowhere when nowhere feels likes it's everywhere after all.

As Donna lit a cigarette outside, I asked her if she was surprised that Will was backpedaling from blaming the game. She said she was, but wondered if he wasn't backing off for another reason.

"What reason is that?" I asked.

"Because the kids inside there are fans of 'Grand Theft Auto,' and they told him if he gets the game pulled from the shelf, they're going to beat him up."

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