Saturday night’s shooting in Monterey Park, California, was carried out, according to the press, by a man named Huu Tran Can. News sources are now identifying him as a Vietnamese immigrant, but that was obvious to me from his name. With tones and diacritical marks, his name would be rendered Hữu Trần Cận or Cẩn or Căn.
His victims, all residents of what was, for all practical purposes, a Chinatown, were presumably Chinese Americans celebrating the lunar new year. As one who has spent a good deal of time with Vietnamese, I know that hostility towards the Chinese goes back many centuries among the Vietnamese. China and Vietnam were at war with each other repeatedly over the centuries. I think it is entirely possible that Can’s killing spree was based on that age-old hatred.
This is merely the latest mass shooting in the U.S. this year. So far, we have had 39 of them, according to CNN. They are only possible because of our unwillingness to take measures to reduce the number of guns available to our people. At the risk of repeating myself, we must repeal the Second Amendment to the Constitution and find ways to get guns out of the hands of our population.
The sooner the better!
Tom Glenn, Writer 