VivirLatino

As many of you may have heard by now, the gunman who shot and killed at least 12 people and then himself has been identified as Jiverly Wong. The details about this man’s life are slowly starting to emerge–and speculation is beginning. According to the AP, Wong was a Vietnamese immigrant that had really struggled since he came to the U.S.:

Police and Wong’s acquaintances portrayed him as an angry, troubled 41-year-old man who struggled with drugs and job loss and perhaps blamed his adopted country for his troubles. His rampage “was not a surprise” to those who knew him, Zikuski said.

“He felt degraded because people were apparently making fun of his poor English speaking,” the chief said.

Wong, who used the alias Jiverly Voong, believed people close to him were making fun of him for his poor English language skills, the chief said.

Until last month, he had been taking classes at the American Civic Association, which teaches English to immigrants and helps them prepare for citizenship tests.

As many of us who are in the middle of or otherwise connected to the immigrant community know, picking up and moving from your place of origin is an incredibly difficult experience under the best of circumstances. When you don’t speak English and don’t have a job, things get even worse. And if you leave your family behind or otherwise don’t bring along or join any support networks once you get to where you’re going, things are near impossible.

But of course, the complications of living in entirely new surroundings with little to no support structures and possibly also having mental illness complicated by drug use–those things will not be investigated into at all in this horrific case. What people will focus on is that Wong “hated the U.S.”–which, of course, implies that he was a terrorist. Or had terrorist connections. Or believed in terrorism. Etc. Etc.

I don’t for a minute want to suggest that this guy is somebody we should not be angry at, not be disgusted by, not be enraged at. He murdered other people who are in the same damn position he is–making the lives of their families unspeakably grief stricken.

But if we ever want to make these stupid, senseless, horrific shootings STOP–we must not take the easy way out and blame this man on “terrorism.” We must be willing to look in multiple places for the answers–our mental health system, our networking system for immigrants, the hyper violence of our culture that invites violent responses to seemingly trivial issues. There needs to be more than one method to “catch” somebody who is living on the brink of violent explosion–and as it stands, we don’t even have one method.

I send good thoughts to the families and community dealing with this crisis right now.