Struggling With Compassion

I am struggling with compassion this morning and it is really bugging me.
I am attending a rally to support the family of one of the kids killed at a school shooting and to prevent a hate group's protests from reaching that family.  I want to hate this group.  I want to judge them.  I want to pull a gun on them.  I want to bomb their church with all of them in it.  But I know that this is the opposite of what I should do, and what I will do.  I just don't understand the hate and ignorance.
The group touts themselves as Christian, yet they do not show the basic tenets of Christianity.  I think a great deal of my struggle comes from not understanding these people and their motivations.  How can one live with so much hate and anger that the only way to feel better is to take it out on the grieving?  Then the rational mind speaks up and says, "what if these people aren't even religious?  What if they are just using it as a scapegoat for their prejudice and bigotry?  What if they are using it for attention?"  Then I just get sad.
I believe religion can be a beautiful thing that brings people together to worship and live lives full of the positive beliefs that most dogmas contain, at their most basic anyway.  I am sad that people use it to justify their prejudice and hate.  I wonder if most of the members of this "church" aren't just good people who were lost and needed someone to show them a way to live.  That someone just happened to be a person overflowing with those things that bring us to our darker selves.  So what do I do?  What can I do?

I have moments of self-righteousness.  I have found solace and some peace in the words of the Dalai Lama and the Buddha.  For me those things work and I believe that the messages of compassion, selflessness, love, mindfulness, tolerance, etc. are the truth.  When I feel that strongly about something, I have a hard time believing that it is not right.....
And that is my answer.
When I believe something very strongly, I have a hard time believing it is not right.  I am not the only person that feels this way.  It would be my guess that some of the people that tout messages of hate and intolerance believe that they are right.  Their method of getting that message across is different from mine, but is essentially the same thing.  Those people, like all living things, only want to be happy.  The path they have chosen is the path they believe to be the correct one.  The path I have chosen is the one I believe is right.  When it comes down to it, we are the same.
I have a hard time, however, believing that they are happy.  Living with such ugly emotions makes it very hard to be truly at peace.  Like the Dalai Lama XIV said, "“I believe compassion to be one of the few things we can practice that will bring immediate and long-term happiness to our lives. I’m not talking about the short-term gratification of pleasures like sex, drugs or gambling (though I’m not knocking them), but something that will bring true and lasting happiness. The kind that sticks.”  Those moments that we do something for someone else with nothing more than compassion to motivate us are the times we feel really good.  I use "we", though I only know how it feels for me.  I believe that I am not the only one. 
The more strongly I begin to feel that compassion and love are the correct path (both of which are basic guidelines in the major religions) the more I struggle with the world and with groups like this one.  It is confusing and frustrating.  But, it is in these challenging moments that we can learn and strengthen our own compassion.  Perhaps that is their purpose. 

I have a feeling that I will struggle with this for quite some time, especially if these people show up tomorrow.  If I can learn anything about myself, at least that will be positive.  One thing I can say about this group is that they have been successful at bringing people together against their protests.  They are inadvertently teaching compassion.