

He also got a 30 year sentence for burglary, which seems like an out of control maximum sentence for burglary. Dude was also 67 (was ~44 at the time of his crime), and had been behind bars for 23 yrs, why waste the time/money unless the fantasy of killing (or the power trip) is the goal.
And not an excuse, but the guy grew up watching his mother get beatings from an alcoholic father, and surprisingly had mental health and substance abuse issues. He apparently was drunk and doing coke before going to the girls house with a bat to confront her, and got there and found the parents she was living with and attacked them both going back and forth between rooms.
The US as a whole has gotten more extreme (we just elected a guy that praised Hitler), but we also have kids born into a world where school shootings are a common occurrence. Kids are surrounded by adults that hate people that don’t fit the “norm”, that fear everything, and then they see violence everywhere.
I mean we just re-elected a guy that used violence in an effort to overthrow the government, and not only did we not punish him, we gave him that highest position in our government. He then freed the people that carried out his orders.
The Right has also embraced the Proud Boys and other domestic terrorist organizations. The President met with a former Grand Wizard of the KKK, and told people that Nazi’s marching with tiki torches chanting “Jews will not replace us” were “some very fine people”.