'Radicalizing Our Elders'—California Shootings Leave Asian Americans Aghast

Recent mass shootings in California that are suspected of being committed by elderly Asian men have left the Asian American community shaken once again.

An attack at a dance hall in Monterey Park, a predominantly Asian American community, during Lunar New Year celebrations on Saturday night, left 11 people dead. The suspect, 72-year-old Huu Can Tran, was found dead in a van the following morning of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said.

Then, on Monday night, seven people were killed in a pair of related shootings at agricultural facilities in Half Moon Bay, a city about 30 miles south of San Francisco. The suspect, 67-year-old Chunli Zhao, was arrested without incident a few hours after the shootings, authorities said.

Pastor Raymond Chang on Twitter pointed to a deadly shooting at a church in Laguna Woods, California last year where the alleged gunman was 68-year-old David Chou.

"Something is radicalizing our elders and leading them to procure guns to enact deadly violence," wrote Chang, who is president of the Asian American Christian Collaborative.

Chang told Newsweek that some Asian elders are turning to "unreliable" sources for news and information.

"Whether it's the endless rabbit trails on YouTube, or through the far-right wing propaganda that often gets spread through channels like WeChat, KakaoTalk and WhatsApp," he said.

"They are often also navigating a type of helplessness and even at times, neglect and elder neglect, where they are living in isolation and loneliness…when they haven't had space to process, get cared for, get the support they need to be in community, they go to darker and darker places.

"Once they see one person getting access to a gun, and using that gun to wreak havoc out of that desperation or in the midst of being in such a dark place, they see that as a viable option."

Chang also said gun manufacturers are increasingly "targeting racialized minority populations."

"If their goal is to sell another gun, they're gonna go to the population that don't have as many guns, which are more often communities of color than white communities," he said.

Chang said the shootings were yet another blow to a community still traumatized by the spike in anti-Asian hate in recent years.

"The Asian American community as a whole in the U.S. has not been able to fully process through and heal from the overt spike in violence that has basically affected us all in the last several years," he said. "It compounds on the unprocessed pain and trauma that we've experienced. It only adds more fear to a community that hasn't felt like adequate attention and support has been given to it."

Manjusha Kulkarni, a co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, has said that a report by the group co-written with AARP in 2022 found that 98 percent of Asian elders said the U.S. was a more dangerous place for them.

"When we are looking at 18 people who have lost their lives, the conversation needs to be about gun violence prevention, because we don't know the motives of the Asian shooters and we may never know them," she told Newsweek.

"We've tracked how experiencing hate has had a toll on AAPIs, but nothing we've documented suggests that it has turned any into perpetrators."

Gun sales to Asian Americans have soared since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Those who experienced racial discrimination were more likely to purchase a gun and ammunition during the pandemic, according to a 2022 study from the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University.

Sylvia Chan-Malik, an associate professor of American and Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, also noted that the way Asian American elders consume media has changed in recent years.

"Unlike the past, when they mostly read Asian-language newspapers/watched TV news, many now get their info from YouTube," she wrote in a thread on Twitter.

"They watch video after video from their suggestions. As with all media bubbles, this produces an echo chamber, offering ideology disguised as news. This is exacerbated by language & cultural differences that already keep them from engaging a wider range of sources."

Chan-Malik, who grew up in the Bay Area, also told Newsweek that the shootings have left the Asian American community "unsettled."

"We are brought up in a culture in which we are always taught to have deference for elders...this is a cultural kind of mainstay," she said. "I think there's an incredible sense of shock and, and just confusion around this. It seems to kind of disrupt the order of things in this really, really horrifying way."

Another factor is that Asian American elders may be less likely to seek mental health treatment, Chan-Malik said.

"Mental health is a huge issue because it's not one that elderly Asian Americans are going to go seek treatment for," she said. "So these types of traumatic histories do, I believe, make them more susceptible to particular ideologies and prone to turning to violence."

Update 01/24/23, 11:15 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comments from Raymond Chang and Sylvia Chan-Malik.

Update 01/25/23, 9:30 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comments from Manjusha Kulkarni.