Per the CNN story, its certainly possible he had a mental break after failing to get a job in the forestry service and just decided to take it out on a couple of firefighters before offing himself.

Did his parents holding extremist political views and a fetish for firearms play a role in his actions? Would be more unbelievable if they didn't. But I don't think he'd have been better off with a couple of parents who were firmly in the Ted Cruz camp or disaffected Liz Cheney die-hards, either.

If I was to take a wild guess, I'd say this was the direct result of a kid who was out of high school, unemployed, with no real future on the horizon, who was terminally online in a community of (likely a large number of bot-accounts and trolls) telling him he's worthless and should just off himself.

A classic problem of "surplus males" that plague every militant reactionary society.