Most extreme violence originates in mental illness coupled with child abuse. Rarely, it's pure mental illness. Rarest of all, it's a seemingly mentally well person from a decent background who has chosen to be agents of Evil for no discernible reason: this is profoundly disturbing, and so alienating from God that these people are the most pitiable of the bunch... They do deserve punishment, and I am completely confident that it is coming in the next life if not this one, and so I will forgive and pray that there is a single iota of goodness in them that outshines the darkness for their mother's sake...

The way I see it is that...

- People suffer mental breaks and make terrible decisions but this does not need to make me vengeful.
- We alienate mentally unwell people and fail to treat them fairly, so we are part of the problem.

Obviously, the man who cheats on his spouse, like the man who shoots up a school, made those final extreme decisions themselves... But we also do create circumstances that drive people toward their worst case scenarios. I am not suggesting they do not go to jail, so don't get mad when I suggest that you should feel guilty for bullying the mentally unwell or withholding kindness from them. Some of these people are coming completely undone and needed a more robust support network.

Anger is emotional and serves no purpose... And we should not politicize these events... Even when they are explicitly political.

At the heart of extreme violence done by an individual is illness and abuse, sometimes personal evil. None of this is political.