Immigrant on Immigrant Massacre

Last Friday, a town probably most famous for its State University was the site of a horrific massacre when a Vietnamese immigrant named Jiverly Voong went into an immigration center armed to the teeth and killed 13 people before turning the gun on himself. Authorities and pundits have used the word "coward", "lunatic", and "maniac" to describe Voong, but I wonder if these labels are used more for our own comfort (yes, I realize that there are some disturbing letters attributed to him) - pigeon-holing the young man and fitting him in a category far away from us "normal folks" to give us a false sense of understanding of a tragedy which is difficult to understand.

Not a whole lot is still known about the shooter, though an article in the New York Daily News provides us a glimpse into Jiverly Voong. While there are a handful of angry comments, there isn't a heck of lot that would make it evident that he would be capable of such an atrocity. He's a bitter immigrant who has been beaten down and depressed by a seemingly endless string of personal and professional failures. His wife and kids left him and he had lost his job on more than one occasion, all of which made him understandably (without excusing his actions) angry about his lot in life. As a result, he lashed out with rage towards a society that he had felt that taken him for granted, a society which he felt had failed to live up to the expectations of having an attainable American dream.

I wonder with trepidation of the the plentitude of Jiverly Voongs who are out there. In a damaged economy, how many people are out there with little support systems, little hope, and a lot of anger? How many people in our country, let alone immigrants, are going to feel that this country has failed to meet their personal senses of entitlement, and will snap in the same way that Jiverly Voong did?

I wonder if, despite the fact that most of Voong's victims were immigrants themselves, will those who promote racist ideology begin to connect dots between Jiverly Voong and Cho Seung-Hui, the architect of the Virginia Tech Massacre two years ago? Will opportunistic politicians use this to fan the fear of foreigners? Will the stereotype of "the bitter and crazy gun-toting Asian man" take its place in the hall of shame of Asian stereotypes alongside "the socially-awkward nerdy Asian overachiever" and "the exotic and eroticized Asian geisha girl"?

I wonder if this is going to lead to opportunistic hand-wringing from both sides of the gun lobby - gun-lovers who will insist if we armed the receptionists that this terrible tragedy could have been avoided, and gun-haters who insist is nobody had a gun this wouldn't have happened in the first place. I wonder if in addition to introducing legislation preventing those who have criminal records or mental health issues to carry permits, there will be an amendment forbidding gun ownership for those who are deemed "bitter and angry". As a recent analysis in MSNBC pointed out, "What's truly unsettling in America's new era of gloom and dead ends is wondering how many of those 663,000 might be deeply, irrevocably angry about it — and might have a gun."

Pray for healing for the people of Binghamton. And pray for the many people across the country who, let's be frank, don't feel a whole lot different that Jiverly Voong felt when he walked into an immigration center last Friday.