Here's what I'd like to ask them. Do you believe that people truly choose their responses to adversity? Are people in general who lash out against their abusers cowards, and if not, then how is severe bullying different from other types of abuse? If men who carry out mass shootings had simply killed themselves alone, would they still be cowards?
Of course if the condition present in the final question were true, then you would've never even heard of these men to begin with, because nobody cares until the pain is projected outward. However that's besides the point, what I'm getting at is that ideas like "excuse" and "justification" only exist within minds of people as they desperately try to make agents outside of themselves conform to their own cognitive biases and faith based beliefs. Whether or not you, me, or anybody else validates the actions of mass killers is completely divorced from anything which makes an effectual difference in preventing the actions of those whom society vilifies.
With a lot of these attacks, it's foolish to believe the primary motive is a desire to kill, as the majority of the killers don't live long enough obtain whatever could possibly be gained from their actions. Most of the time, carrying out a mass shooting seems to be a really awful suicide method, getting revenge in the process of dying (while usually failing to even hurt the true object of their anger as they kill random people) but not much beyond that. When it comes to suicide attacks, it's sad how people think the primary question should asking how people acquired the means. Imagine hearing about a suicide and questioning only how an individual obtained the materials used in their suicide, it makes no fucking sense. You don't prevent suicide or violence by removing a single means by which to carry these actions out, they would simply be expressed in a different way until the actual causes were addressed. But of course, people at large have no interest in addressing the causes. So instead of attempting to prevent the circumstances which lead people to carry out suicidal attacks, society just tries to limit the damage, and importantly, most of the killers likely knew all of this.
