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I think there is at least a casual relationship between one who engages in a terrorist act and a "random" school shooter: There are significant stressors that drive them to commit these acts. Neither a terrorist nor a shooter (in most cases, at least, I would say) simply decides "hey, I think it would be good or interesting to kill some people; I'm not doing much else today, so why not? I've always been curious, and it's not like I like these people very much, I hate them even. And I don't even know them. I think I'll do it."
In either case (again, I will suggest this is most but not all), these individuals are acting out as being driven by stressors that come from society and individual situations. Yes, there are such things as cultural and other conditioning, especially in the case of the terrorist. But indoctrination alone does not drive one to end their lives in a swath of risky violence. There is more to it than that. An extremist of any form does not usually act out in such a way without an accumulation of stressors (or a single extraordinary one) that push them over the edge.
If it isn't stressors, it could simply be mental illness. Either way, I don't buy the argument that there is no motive, no purpose...that they do this for nothing.
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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
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