I find that I cannot affix blame so easily and wholly to one or the other, to our society or to Barton. The lure of easy money and quick wealth creation provided by day trading certainly preyed on Barton's weaknesses, and that field of business should be modified to account for this. It is the peculiar nature of our economic system that we allow an enterprise to prey on our weaknesses, then permit that enterprise to deny responsibility for its actions. Instead we cite free enterprise and individual responsibility, without considering the reverse as well.
I do not excuse Barton from his actions, and his victims did not deserve their fate. My biggest regret in Barton's suicide is that he did not live to face his crimes. I am suggesting, however, that we, as individuals and as a whole society, need to address a larger field of responsibility - that neither party is blameless.
Barton was a man in his forties and responsible for his own actions; however, his killing spree follows in the wake of many others, many of them by children in their schools. Children often do not know why they create such tragedies; in the alternative, they give us reasons trivial to us, yet important to them. Barton was not so different in this respect; he was merely older and had concerns characteristic of an older person rather than a teenager. But there is more than that in common between them.
All were born, raised and educated in a society which preaches a so-called "Christianity" of rules and regulations, of community responsibility and helping our fellows, but which also practices a deliberate and calculated indifference to individuals, except insofar as they conform to this structure. No sane person denies these killers are responsible for their actions and should be held so; but they are like children abused by their parents, who abuse their own children, victim turned attacker. Even in this circumstance, we must admit the wrong done to the child abuser when he was a child without excusing his own abusing. The sword of social versus individual responsibility must cut both ways.
(I do not mean to attack Christianity, merely to point out that it, like many other religions or philosophies, is the excuse or justification used for practicing this indifference to people as individuals. It is the rough equivalent to telling someone to pull himself up by his bootstraps, then berating him for not having any boots. I could have instead used Islamic or Jewish fundamentalism.)
No anonymous counselor or liberal educational program will decrease this indifference. Neither will conservative exhortations of morality bring back "the good ol' days." All of us, regardless of whatever social box we have placed ourselves in, must act on an individual basis to reduce our indifference to others; as well, we must fight the tendency to reduce our beliefs to a black-and-white philosophical system, masquerading as religious belief, which allows or requires us to treat others with indifference, scorn or hatred. Until then, we will keep asking questions without answers, and will continue spewing forth the wrong answers to unasked questions. We will know what happened, but never truly why.