That the shooter claimed to be a Christian is not surprising in itself. As the article points out, even after 9/11 while we focused on Muslim jihadi, violent acts in support of political ends were perpetrated by radical Christians. Ideas do matter. That said, however, you cannot ignore the fact that there are good Muslims, good Christians, good liberals, and whatever else. It is because most people mostly want to do the right thing and mostly achieve most of their good intentions.

My degrees are in criminology. Contrasted with the daily misdeeds of ordinary people, the crimes that put people in prison seem causeless. It is a fact that criminals lack self-awareness. Self-awareness is why egoists are not criminals. So, when you ask a convict why he did that thing, he just enunciates words, streaming nouns and verbs that ultimately have no true meaning. He never really identifies his motives because he has no true motivation and has no understanding of the true origins of his actions.

Evil people do exist and they make evil choices. But Emanuel Samson was not an Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden was evil. Samson is just confused.