I'll play devils advocate. I hate Obama too, but you have to be a complete idiot to so blatantly and publicly threaten his life and to even do so at all. He had motive, opportunity, and means to do so. There's a difference between saying to the pres that you're going to kill him with an earthquake and going to kill him by shooting him. One will be taken more seriously than the other, because AFAIK, we haven't harnessed the awesome power of being able to target people with earthquakes.
He had weapons to be able to do the job, the pres was visiting, and he made the threat. Case closed for me. And along those lines, reporting that he had weapons capable of executing the threat is relevant for a newspaper to report. It would be different, for instance, if the guy stole an apple at the store and the news reported that he had a loaded ar15 in the closet and several thousand rounds of ammo. That's completely unrelated.