Obviously this could have some ordinary explanation (outside the obvious), so there is nothing gained by jumping to conclusions.
Gov. David Paterson says “12 or 13” people were killed in an attack on an immigration services center in Binghamton, N.Y.
A federal law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity also says the shooter has been found dead in the building.
Officials and media reports have said as many as 41 hostages were taken.
The law enforcement official says the gunman entered the building through the front while firing. He had already blocked the back door with his car.
You have to wonder why a person would do something like that.
estamm
I read one news report that the gunman was probably Vietnamese. (The police brought in a local prof who was fluent in Vietnamese to talk to the gunman.)
Just Some Fuckhead
Crazy people do crazy shit. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@Just Some Fuckhead: Crazy people do crazy shit. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.
Agreed. I hope this gets sorted out without further tragedy.
smiley
@estamm:
I thought he was an American of Vietnamese decent but I’m not sure too much is known at this pint.
Edit:
Now there is a Friday afternoon slip ‘o the tongue.
cleek
a few more pints should clear things up. let’s start now!
Halteclere
There are several things in play nationwide right now that could contribute to such a thing is this.
A) There seems to be an inverse relationship between the state of the economy and the number of people going on a killing spree after losing their job (which initially appears to have happened to the the suspect) or other such financial calamity.
B) Anti-government and militia extremism and rhetoric is on the rise, fueling people to stock up on guns and ammo and helping push troubled, hate-filled people towards such violence by providing a thin veil of legitimacy to their twisted thoughts.
C) The recent abundance of stories of people going on killing sprees to correct some perceived wrong may be planting the seeds of the idea into other people’s head.
Zifnab
He clearly did this because New York doesn’t have conceal and carry handgun laws.
MobiusKlein
@Halteclere:
D) the immigration system in the country is byzantine, horrible, and maddeningly slow. A rage inducing bit
The Other Steve
He was upset because Rush Limbaugh is leaving the state due to high taxes.
Tsulagi
Oh, I dunno, while it might not be in this case, usually I chalk it up to the high-strung crazy white guy factor. While my white side vehemently disagrees (of course, he’s crazy), my red and black sides say “you got that shit right.”
cay
Glenn Beck/Lou Dobbs would be proud…if he were white. Take up arms, America!
wasabi gasp
dish soap
Hugh
It is indeed hard not to jump to conclusions here with all the racist, anti-immigration crap out there. But it is also very important to resist that impulse. The facts will become clear and then we’ll know what the deal is.
jake 4 that 1
Insanity or assholery are your only two choices.
And this:
Gladwell talks about this in Tipping Point (unless I mean his other book).
Peter J
If non citizens had been allowed to carry concealed weapons then this would never had happened.
D-Chance.
Obviously this could have some ordinary explanation (outside the obvious), so there is nothing gained by jumping to conclusions.
Which is why Timmeh threw up a non-related link implying the shooter must being a white Republican.
One would think the classy thing to do would be to allow the corpses to cool down and quit oozing blood before beginning the political "games" (and, evidently, Timmeh sees a dozen or more dead bodies as a game… hence, his little poli-posting).
Mary
Remember when that McCain worker in Texas said she was attacked by an Obama supporter that cut up her face? She had similarly said her windshield was smashed by the "opposition" when she worked for Ron Paul.
My coworker said these things don’t make people crazy, they give the crazies an excuse.
I’d still place my bet on disgruntled employee or jaded lover.
dslak
Is there really an answer to this question that’s any more reasonable than "I don’t like Mondays"?
As for the shooter being Vietnamese-American, that doesn’t at all entail that he didn’t have anti-immigrant sentiments which were fanned by the usual suspects. Irrational hatred of those who are different knows of no ethnic boundaries.
LarryB
Agreed. The 10 o’clock
newsfreak show is so toxic it should come with a Surgeon General’s warning.Mnemosyne
The ordinary explanation, of course, is that his ex-wife or ex-girlfriend was in the building and he was trying to kill her.
Sad that the ordinary explanation doesn’t get our attention unless the guy starts shooting Alzheimer’s patients or dresses up as Santa on Christmas Eve.
smiley
@Peter J: You know, this shit drives me crazy. I’ve owned and been around guns my whole life. I still don’t feel the need to arm myself at all times while moving through civil society. Did you know that there are fanny packs designed to hide a handgun? I live in a tourist town and that worries me.
dslak
@Mnemosyne: I was just listening to some commentary by a radio station local to the area, and apparently this guy was recently laid off from IBM, which has been outsourcing a lot of jobs.
That’s why plenty of reasonable people are attributing the shooting to anti-immigration sentiment on the part of the shooter. They could be wrong, of course, but their assumptions are not unreasonable.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@Mary: I’d still place my bet on disgruntled employee or jaded lover.
Maybe you mean jilted lover – but whether you do or not, I kind of like how this reads.
Martin
Or even the same. I’m always a bit surprised at how strong the anti-immigrant talk out of long patriated Mexican-Americans can be.
I mean, it’s getting so you can’t stereotype anyone these days!
dslak
Yeah, a jaded lover would just get drunk or stoned.
chopper
guh. my brother teaches at binghamton. this story scared the shit out of me when i first heard of it.
everything’s cool tho.
Mary
@Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist: …after 5 PM…Friday…you understand
dslak
@Martin: Ah, but those other Mexicans are different, you see! People are surprisingly good at equating seemingly banal differences with others as suggestive of moral failing. Say, liking a different football team.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@dslak: Yeah, a jaded lover would just get drunk or stoned.
Indeed, ennui-based gun attacks are extremely rare outside of certain regions in France.
@Mary – no worries, I figured it was something like that. Happy accident, tho, nice image.
joes527
No the assumptions and attributions started long before the "he was recently laid off" bit hit the news.
Even Tim needs to link to a story of a crazy immigrant killer in the original post so that we all get that his "nothing to be gained by jumping to conclusions" is a put on.
It is clear that this is a tragedy.
All else is speculation at this point.
Mnemosyne
@dslak:
Agreed. Just pointing out that since we just had an extremely well-publicized shooting rampage a few days ago where the guy was trying to kill his ex-wife, the even more likely explanation, unfortunately, is domestic violence.
Martin
Some of them are, actually. Many of the long-patriated folks were here before the border moved, so they never actually immigrated. They’re probably equally unhappy with my white ass showing up in Cali.
The other thing I’m always surprised at is the differing views of blacks of slave descent and those who aren’t. I’ve heard a few folks mention that they didn’t feel that Obama really is the last word on equality for blacks because he doesn’t have the slave ancestry for the media to dig into. They’re waiting for the day when big media is forced to report on who owned or lynched the President’s great-grandfather.
Just Some Fuckhead
I’m standing by "crazy". I can’t imagine hearing an explanation that would make me think, "Oh, that makes sense." or "Well, of course he barricaded the place and shot fifteen people."
The Populist
If it was an IBM guy who was laid off it doesn’t excuse this BUT the right need to stand up to their big business benefactors to say NO to replacing American workers with cheaper foreign labor.
dslak
JSF: Yes, although I like the way another poster here put it better.
dslak
@joes527: It’s still reasonable to think that a guy who shot up a civic center for immigrants had a problem with immigrants, and there’s a common history of such groups being targeted in economic downturns. It’s just important to realize that this is not the only reasonable possibility, but I don’t think anyone here has denied that.
This is of course a tragedy, as many of the victims were on the path to becoming US citizens, and now that honor has been denied to many of them. If this guy was motivated by hatred of immigrants, and that hatred was incubated by certain public figures regularly demonizing people for either not speaking English or else being proud of their ethnic heritage, it’s imporant that those figures take some responsibility for the consequences of their actions.
Laura W
@dslak:
No no no no.
Fuckhead put it better.
Martin
Of course it’s crazy. It’s not an explanation that you look for but a trigger. If he lost his job, why shoot up an immigration place? (Hypothetical, since we really don’t know the circumstances here at all) Where does that connection come from? That’s the problem we have now – too many people making scapegoats out of various unempowered groups and suggesting that the country will be worse off because those groups exist.
dslak
You only feel this way because you’re a Fuckhead cultist.
Miriam
I’m just worried that with the job situation deteriorating so quickly, there will be a whole bunch more of these crazy episodes.
Desperate people do desperate things.
Laura W
@dslak:
You betcha!
gwangung
That is not bad thing to be a cult of….
dslak
Perhaps Fuckhead is the Stalin to Obama’s Lenin?
Roger Moore
There are some areas where that’s true, but not many. Part of the reason the US was able to take the Southwest away from Mexico was that it was very sparsely populated. Most of the long-patriated Mexican Americans’ ancestors moved to the US in the early 20th Century.
Of course that doesn’t invalidate their reasons for not liking the current batch of immigrants. Many of them feel that their ancestors immigrated legally, so they resent more recent illegal immigrants. There’s also a problem that much of the anti-immigrant backlash winds up hitting everyone of Mexican ancestry, legal or illegal, newly immigrated or native born. Getting hit by collateral damage that way makes many native born Mexican Americans angry at the newcomers, who they see as the cause of any problems they experience as a result.
dslak
@Roger Moore: I’ve seen many examples of what you mention in your second paragraph. My dad, for example, considers anyone who speaks Spanish in his vicinity to be an illegal immigrant.
Reich Wingnut
If they had the Ten Commandments posted in the building, this never would have happened. Or if everyone had concealed handguns. Or if they all got tax cuts. Or something.
That’s all the ideas I have.
Just Some Fuckhead
@dslak: I liked yers too. Except it didn’t happen on Monday.
dslak
@Just Some Fuckhead: A minor quibble, surely.
Just Some Fuckhead
@gwangung:
Nah, I’m just a fuckhead.
Litlebritdifrnt
I have not read any of the comments, so forgive me if this has been repeated, BUT having been subject to the tactics of the US Immigration Service I can understand his frustration. Ya’ll know me, I am English, I speak pretty good English (standard BBC) when I went for my interview at the INS the intervewer treated me like a moron, I believe that my command of the language was greater than his, and yet he continued to question me as if English was foreign to me. I got so mad at one point that my DH was kicking me under the desk. When I went to renew my alien registration card a couple of years ago the agents behind the glass window were wearing rubber gloves, WHAT? They think they are going to catch fucking foreigner cooties? I have NEVER, EVER, in my life been treated as shoddily as I have been treated by the US Immigration People. I collected unemployment during a brief period of my life in the UK when I was 18, the people were nice, they were polite, they helped. The US Immigration service are a bunch of nasty, self rightous dicks. Period.
dslak
@Litlebritdifrnt: You should try adding all of that plus being South Asian into the mix. I don’t think the immigration people realize that Hindus aren’t Muslims, for example.
Michael Carpet
Horrible story. One gripe — can we please quit using the term "shooter"? We have real words for this person. We say "victim," not "shootee." Why not "perpetrator" or "gunman"? "Shooter" is a neologism born of cop-speak.
Sophist
Pedantry fail. "Perpetrator" and "gunman" don’t match "victim" any better than "shooter". If you’re going to get snippy about the terms agreeing, the proper word would be "victimizer".
So nyaah!
Andre
@Sophist: Homicide gunuser? (h/t Faux News)
dslak
@Andre: In keeping with the Fox News spirit, I think it should actually be "suicide gunuser." That’s the only correlate term which could make as little sense as "homicide bomber."
Dreggas
@dslak: by the end of next week he’ll be Glen Beck’s patriot of the week.
Mnemosyne
@Michael Carpet:
"Murderer" works for me.
cosanostradamus
.
So, in Binghamton, they won’t be opening the door without demanding, "Friend or pho?"
.
JWW
Did Gov Paterson see it for himself?
Just the VP have an answer? No, but he will.
Ecks
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Yeah, I’ve crossed the border from Canada a bunch of times, and if you come over in a bus, then you sometimes have to wait a while while they do a random search, that just happens to randomly be of the one Black guy’s back. Oh randomness, how quirky you are!
(and I’m bi-national… made the mistake of walking in once and showing the guy a passport and a citizenship card from the two countries – then had to undergo questioning from the exceptionally well informed US customs official about whether it is technically possible to be a citizen of two countries at once. I guess they must have a lot of experience with citizenship issues when they work the border or something. :Headdesk:
asiangrrlMN
Please don’t let him be Asian. Please don’t let him be Asian. Please don’t let him be Asian. That’s all I keep thinking. Please don’t let him be Asian.
Well, of course alongside, WTF? That’s horrible. But, I am ashamed to say, the ‘Please don’t let him be Asian’ thought ran in a loop in my mind as I read different articles.
dslak
Well, asiangrrl, I hate to be bearer of bad news.
joe from Lowell
AAsianGrrlMN
It’s funny.
I never once found myself thinking "Please don’t let him be white," or "Please don’t let him be male," even though almost all of these type of murderers are white males.
gwangung
@joe from Lowell:
It’s a real common sentiment among minority groups when something heinous like this occurs…
asiangrrlMN
Crap. Crap, crap, crap.
gwangung, yeah, no doubt. It’s like Ta-Nehisi Coates being embarrassed by Mos Def whereas most white people aren’t embarrassed by Glenn Beck.
We Asians are the ‘invisible minority’ to begin with, and I remember all the hatred when the VA Tech shooter turned out to be Asian-American. I remember the racism and how ashamed/afraid I felt. Closer to home, when the Hmong hunter got into a deadly fight with the white hunters and killed six of them, it got really ugly.
Sophist
Yeah, it’s almost as though people don’t think us white males need to answer for the actions of other white males, just because we happen to share the same skin tone/chromosome pairing. Odd, that.
gwangung
It’s the result of stereotyping minorities, I think. We get painted with the virtues and flaws of others who the mainstream think we look like, and we internalize this. It’s the inevitable end-product of being made the Other, a self-consciousness that’s taken to almost pathological extremes.
cosanostradamus
.
If you’ve never been a hated and feared minority, like us "haoles" (whites) here in Hawaii, you can’t possibly understand.
Remember the many loyal native-born third-generation Japanese-Americans who lost all their property and were locked up in camps thousands of miles away from their homes, simply because of their ancestry?
You may have already forgotten the immediate post-9/11 hysteria, when a Punjabi (Indian) Sikh in a turban was killed at a gas station in Arizona, and many others were harassed, though some of them regard Muslims as the enemy themselves, and they are certainly not Arabs. But they do look like Arabs, to some people. And that’s enough to get you killed.
I doubt most Caucasians who have not lived among orientals can tell them apart, by nationality or between individuals. After fifteen years here, I know a Korean from a Japanese from a Chinese from a Vietnamese from a Thai from a Filipino, in the same way that I know an Irishman from a Scot from an Englishman from a Dutchman from a German from a Pole. But I’m often wrong, in either case. It doesn’t matter much in most cases, but in the case of a howling mob or an armed redneck, it might.
I’m an Irish Catholic by ancestry, and I was ashamed to see both Catholics attacking Protestants and vice versa with inhuman fury and viciousness after brutal attacks on their own. It didn’t matter that the victims had nothing to do with the original attacks. They were slaughtered like animals, even on camera.
Human beings are very dangerous and completely irrational when angered or frightened, pumped up with hate or notions of revenge. Beware. And don’t belittle those who are wary. They’re wise.
.
Common Sense
What I don’t get is these were the legal ones. He shot people taking a citizenship class. If this really had anything to do with the illegal immigrant fervor, wouldn’t he go somehere the illegal ones are, rather than the one place we can be pretty much certain they aren’t?
harlana pepper
Eh, same thing I have been predicting for the last few months – more of this to come, I’m sorry to say
harlana pepper
@Common Sense:
When somebody cracks like that, reason and logic go out the window. Maybe he hated them for learning to speak English better than he did – who knows.
Woodrowfan
While I am reserving judgment on the killer’s reasoning, I would note that I’ve met some Asian immigrants (and their kids) who are very anti-immigrant when it comes to those from Latin American. They argue that they went through the system legally and resent those that they feel "cheated" by slipping in illegally.
Woodrowfan
When somebody cracks like that, reason and logic go out the window. Maybe he hated them for learning to speak English better than he did – who knows.
Actually, from an article I just read, that’s not far off…
Mnemosyne
@Common Sense:
You’ve missed out on all of the oh-so-fun right-wing rhetoric claiming that illegal immigrants get all kinds of free government benefits while legal immigrants and US citizens go without.
Take a look at this comment about the shooting from my personal nominee for Worst Person in the World, Debbie Schlussel:
This is the kind of stuff that the extreme right wing is putting out every day. They constantly conflate immigrants and illegal immigrants and imply that most immigrants are here illegally.
gex
@dslak: This.
My father, who was born in China and became a citizen by marrying my mom, received an early retirement package from Lockheed Martin a few years ago. After going into the Social Security offices to do something or other, he came home with a complaint about "all those foreigners" who were receiving gubmint money.
I mean, WTF? Like those non-white people couldn’t be citizens like him? Like people couldn’t just look at him and say the same thing?
Now, keep in mind, my dad is a long time republican. This is just in the DNA. Blame the foreigners, even if you are one.
gex
@asiangrrlMN:
Hello there from another Asian girl in MN (gay not bi like you).
Some dick I work with believes discrimination and racism aren’t really that prevalent. Oddly, no one ever treats this particular straight white Christian man like a gay brown atheist woman, so that sort of treatment must not exist. So I had to tell him about the fucking death threats that I used to receive at home when my parents were gone for the weekend. It must have been a neighbor, because who else knew there were Asians there?
It was interesting for me to see you call us the "invisible minority." Did you know that the reason that the Chinese were used to build the railroads was because black slaves were considered to be more valuable? And that the US considered changing the Constitution such that being born on American soil wouldn’t make you a citizen because of the Chinese being born here?
But yes. White people have the luxury of not being associated with Timothy McVeigh or Eric Rudolph or BTK or Unabomber or Charlie Manson and on and on and on… Must be nice.