Taliban Chief: I Ordered the Binghamton Shootings

This story definitely should be filed under “News of the Weird”. According to a Pakistani Taliban leader, he gave the order that resulted in yesterday’s mass shooting in Binghamton, New York:

Taliban Chief Claims Responsibility for N.Y. Shooting Massacre

A Pakistani Taliban militant leader has claimed responsibility for the attack on a U.S. immigration center in New York state in which 13 people were killed, Reuters reported.

“I accept responsibility. They were my men. I gave them orders in reaction to U.S. drone attacks,” Baituallah Mehsud told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location on Saturday.

Hmm — the long arm of the Pakistani Taliban. Must be good for recruiting new mujahideen to the cause in the Swat Valley.

However, according to the accounts emerging from the American media, the Binghamton killer was a deranged marginalized person who felt humiliated by the way he was treated, a sort of grown-up immigrant version of the bullied Columbine shooters:
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Wong, who used the alias Jiverly Voong, believed people close to him were making fun of him for his poor English language skills, Zikuski said.

Wong was ethnically Chinese but from Vietnam, a friend said Saturday. He was angry about recently losing a job, couldn’t find work and complained that his unemployment checks were only $200 a week, said Hue Huynh, a Binghamton grocery store proprietor whose husband worked with Wong years ago.

Wong had driven a truck in California before recently returning to Binghamton, only to lose a job there, Huynh said.

“He’s upset he don’t have a job here. He come back and want to work,” she said. Her husband tried to cheer him by telling him he was still young and there was plenty of time to find work, but he complained about his “bad luck,” she said.

The media have been handed a two-fer with this one. First of all, the perp was an immigrant victim who was treated badly by racists in his adopted country.

Secondly, his guns were legal:

Wong had a permit for the two handguns he used, Zikuski said. Most of the victims had multiple gunshot wounds, he said.

I don’t need a crystal ball to tell me what this means: more gun control! Watch for stricter permit requirements for handguns — if not an outright ban on handgun ownership — in New York State.

As for the Taliban, they don’t need no stinkin’ permits.

And they don’t actually need to carry out a mass killing in order to reap the ghoulish benefits of it. It’s all bang and no buck for them: claim responsibility for any incident anywhere in the world in which infidels are killed.

They may want to expand their repertoire to include fires, floods, tornados and earthquakes. Can’t hurt, can it?


Hat tip: TB.