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DC Shooting Was Not an Afghan or Immigrant Import—It Was All-American Violence
American violence in its many forms destabilized the alleged killer Rahmanullah Lakanwal.
Dec 07, 2025
I’ve heard very few people say it, but Spencer Ackerman recently said it best: “The most sobering fact about Wednesday’s slayings is that the alleged killer, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was all too compatible with Western Civilization.” And we have the data to back his claims.
The early findings from investigations into the potential motives of Lakanwal, who allegedly shot two National Guardsmen last month, do not gel well with the MAGA narrative that immigrants are in some way inherently dangerous criminals. Instead, what is coming to light is an all too believable American context: US imperialism-induced trauma, lack of resources, and infrastructure to assist those in need (oh I don’t know, something like Universal Healthcare?), and most likely an all too easily accessed gun, created violent conditions. These are all quite sadly the makings of a very American event. Regardless, the Trump administration is unsurprisingly using this tragedy to justify and expedite an anti-immigrant agenda they already had in motion. Everything they have to say on the matter is pure fiction. It might be tiresome, but we need to continue providing the actual evidence contrary to MAGA’s lies.
I spent the better part of 2025 engaged in a research project with the Afghan community in the state of Vermont. I conducted a large survey, a series of interviews, and a national data analysis aimed at assessing the socioeconomic well-being of Afghans in the state, four years after the US ended its 20-year occupation in Afghanistan, which led to the subsequent fall of Kabul and the largest airlift in US history. Over 200,000 Afghans most closely allied with US operations have since been resettled in communities around the US, including Vermont.
Over the course of 2025, I spent a lot of time working side by side with Afghans, in Afghan homes, in conversations around coffee tables, and at community gathering spaces, getting to know Afghan Vermonters. One can of course never generalize about the "nature" of an entire population; however, in my experience, Afghans were overwhelmingly kind, welcoming, generous, and at the risk of repeating a common trope associated with liberal-American ideology, incredibly hardworking. It feels ridiculous to even have to type these words, but at no point did I feel in danger, like I was amid "criminals," or any other ludicrous claims the Trump administration and their ilk try to place on entire groups of people, just because they have arrived from other countries. The hundreds of Afghans I engaged with always met me with a smile, offered me phenomenal tea and snacks, and were generous with their time, candidly sharing their experiences in the US.
Western civilization created the conditions in which Lakanwal suffered severe mental health issues, and once he was brought to the US, created the conditions in which Lakanwal had likely limited healthcare supports, reportedly dire economic struggles, and it is safe to assume all too easy access to a gun.
Certain uninformed parties might say, “They played you like a fool, those absolute criminals!” So, anecdotal evidence aside, and the fact that I lived to tell the tale of my experiences with these supposed criminals, we also have the data. And the data is vast.
As countless data-rich research projects, reports, policy analyses, and peer-reviewed journal article after peer-reviewed journal article show, immigrants in the US, across the board, unequivocally, are far less likely to commit a crime in the US than US-born persons. For an extensive but non-exhaustive list that just scratches the surface, see this resource I put together during the 2024 election cycle. What this data overwhelmingly show, if we can generalize anything about an entire subset of people like “immigrants” or “Afghans,” is that immigrants in America are overwhelmingly peaceful and law-abiding.
For the sake of countering one more MAGA lie that says immigrants and the services they receive are already too costly to the US taxpayer, let me point to the other endless data sets that show (time and time again) that immigrants from all backgrounds, from undocumented, to refugee, to O-1 visa holder alike, provide far more economic benefits to the US than they receive in governmental aid. Immigrants of all backgrounds, examined from many angles and subsets, pay far more into the US tax system than they receive in governmental expenditures and likewise contribute billions of dollars in spending and labor power into the US economy. Need we keep reminding ourselves that this country, after all, was built by immigrants? Correcting the past tense, this country will forever rely on immigrants in ways mainstream politicians seem to never admit.
The data I analyzed in the above-mentioned research is one more set proving this. Through a nationwide analysis of American Community Surveys, we showed that the recently resettled Afghan population in the United States (2021 and on) is already contributing far more in taxes than the costs associated with their resettlement and other support services (including SNAP, housing vouchers, Medicaid, and so on), a ratio that steadily improves each year of US residence per average Afghan household. What’s more is that Afghan spending power in the US (money left to spend after taxes) reached about $2 billion by 2023 (latest available data).
And the findings of our national data make sense given the results of the community survey we also conducted of a large portion of Afghan Vermonters. We found that Afghans in Vermont are highly employed: 73.6% of adult Afghans are currently employed, compared with the total Vermont employment rate of 65.3%. Because of systemic issues that must be addressed in Vermont and across the country, those employed Afghans tend to be paid far less than US-born workers. But even given this systemic wage discrimination, taxes paid through Afghan incomes provide a net gain to the US tax system, and their remaining earnings provide priceless benefits to their local, state, and national economies. I firmly believe that all humans, regardless of any economic benefit they may provide, deserve equal treatment, rights, and dignity, including freedom of movement to improve their lives, wherever that may be. However, for those who need the economics of it all, the truth is clear and undeniable.
In our report, I discuss the undeniable benefit Afghans have provided for Vermont and the country, explore the ways in which Afghans and New Americans still struggle in our communities, e.g. inherently lower wages than US-born people, and I provide a suggested list of policy solutions to improve Afghan and New American livelihoods here, which includes expanding free industry-specific ESL programs; streamlined credential evaluation and licensing for foreign-trained professionals; expanded access to higher education for English Language Learners; investment in affordable and flexible childcare; improved public transportation; and policy solutions at the national level that promote more streamlined pathways to Lawful Permanent Resident status for Afghans in coordination with family reunification efforts, which includes increased funding for legal aid services, to name a few.
Of course, rather than supporting immigrant communities that are so deeply important to the country, President Donald Trump is taking the opportunity to further attack them for political gain. He is twisting the contexts and conditions of last month’s violence to push his far-right agenda, cutting off services that immigrants depend on, and imposing more draconian immigration bans that smack of the purest white nationalism.
Despite these challenges, refugees and immigrants of all statuses continue to contribute significantly to US society and the economy. As the endless research continues to show, refugees and immigrants of all backgrounds are not dangerous for the country and in fact in many ways keep it running.
So, if new Americans are not the problem as the Trump administration would have us believe, then what is? We come back to Ackerman: American Imperial aggression and a violent socioeconomic landscape is the problem. American violence in its many forms destabilized Lakanwal.
The US government is now treating all Afghans like criminals, when those same individuals in one way or another, for 20 years, aided the US in Afghanistan.
What’s become clear in the early days since this tragedy is that Lakanwal struggled with mental health issues that are unsurprising given what he has gone through. If Ackerman’s math is correct, Lakanwal was recruited into one of the CIA’s now infamous Zero Unit “death squads” at the age of 15. A good portion of Lakanwal’s formative years were spent as a child soldier employed by one of the deadliest armed forces in the world, the United States, in which he likely experienced and committed violence few of us could imagine, all at the command and employ of the US government.
“When he saw blood, bodies, and the wounded, he could not tolerate it, and it put a lot of pressure on his mind,” a friend of Lakanwal told the New York Times.
As Ackerman and others are astute to point out, the long-lasting legacy of imperialism has been known to come home in the form of violence.
And whatever affordable mental health support systems Lakanwal may have had in the US, which could have perhaps mitigated the effects of his trauma, were likely minimal.
Here we find American violence in the form of neoliberal policy. Once Lakanwal was resettled in the US, he was thrust into a harsh socioeconomic climate, where many manage to get by as the above data show, but when those with physical or mental illness falter, there are few services available to support them, particularly as the Trump administration has attempted to slash as much as possible, e.g. SNAP and healthcare subsidies. These forms of violence affect everyone including immigrants and are increasingly American.
American violence rears its head again in its abandonment of those in need.
American violence also rears itself in its refusal to regulate gun control in any meaningful way. The US accounts for 76% of public mass shooting incidents around the world, the vast majority conducted by US citizens. Public shootings are an American problem, not an immigrant or Afghan problem.
Western civilization created the conditions in which Lakanwal suffered severe mental health issues, and once he was brought to the US, created the conditions in which Lakanwal had likely limited healthcare supports, reportedly dire economic struggles, and it is safe to assume all too easy access to a gun.
I firmly believe that all persons should be treated with dignity, equality, and afforded the same rights as anyone else, no matter where they come from. There is, however, a deep and undeniable irony in all this that brings to light the true inhumanity of US immigration and domestic policy. That irony rests on the fact that the US government is now treating all Afghans like criminals, when those same individuals in one way or another, for 20 years, aided the US in Afghanistan (no matter how we feel about the occupation) and are still at great risk if they are sent back. They risk death in the context of a violence made possible by the outcomes of imperial violence turned abandonment. They should have been evacuated. They should be allowed to come to the US. They should be given the resources they need to thrive here. Instead, the Trump administration is using them as a scapegoat to churn forth with its nativist, fascist immigration agenda, while it cuts resources for all "old" and "new" Americans alike. The double-edged sword of the Trump administration’s violent opportunism knows no bounds.
If Western civilization is one that commits acts of violence around the world. If Western civilization is one that places profit and corporate lobbyists over the needs of its population. If Western civilization, in the American context, continues to refuse to regulate access to guns in any meaningful way. Then November 26's shooting was an American problem, not an immigrant problem.
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Why We’re Gaslit on Guns and Don’t Know It
What has shaped how most Americans see guns is less the gun lobby’s money than the ideology that it’s been spreading for years.
Aug 29, 2025
“Not again,” countless Americans have said for decades after another mass shooting like the one on Wednesday, August 27 at a mass in church at a Catholic school in Minneapolis. Some experts say we should focus more on the “red flags” that potential shooters may give off so authorities could have a better chance of stopping them. Others say we need to fortify schools and deploy more armed guards to deter them.
Hardly anyone has said, however, what would work, and has been proven to reduce gun violence in every other advanced nation. To license new gun buyers and require both criminal and mental health background checks, and a permit each time they want to purchase either a semiautomatic weapon or handgun. A handful of states like New Jersey have required all these measures for decades every time to buy a handgun, and no court has ruled these regulations violate the Second Amendment.
Back in 1959, the organization that became Gallup reported 75% of Americans would not oppose requiring a permit to buy a gun. Today, however, few Americans including even gun reform advocates talk about gun permits. The reason is that Americans on both sides of our ongoing debate over guns have been gaslit and don’t know it.
There are few more powerful emotions to move groups of people at once like fear. This is where the movement for gun rights and the movement “to make America great again” meet.
The National Rifle Association (NRA), whose leadership has since been ousted over their embezzlements, and the gun industry, represented by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, have both wielded tens of millions of dollars in election campaigns. But their donations explain only part of their influence. What has shaped how most Americans see guns is less their money than the ideology that they’ve been spreading for years.
“They call it the slippery slope, and all of a sudden everything gets taken away,” US President Donald Trump told reporters during his first term after a weekend of deadly shootings in a Walmart parking lot in El Paso and on a bar-lined street in Dayton. He said it after a phone conversation with the NRA’s now-disgraced leader Wayne LaPierre. The phrase is based on the idea that gun control is just a step or two away from gun confiscation and then tyranny.
This view is taken like gospel truth among the ranks and leadership of today’s Republican Party, even though it’s a myth. Gun control has never led to gun confiscation. Communist nations like the Soviet Union and Cuba declared firearms illegal under the threat of imprisonment to compel people to turn them in. Nazi Germany seized few usable firearms from Jews, as one NRA-funded author, Stephen P. Halbrook, admitted, but only in the back pages of his book, Gun Control in the Third Reich, published by a small California think tank. Democratic countries like the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand have used buyback campaigns to voluntarily compel people to turn in semiautomatic weapons.
Democratic Party leaders and gun reform advocates are partly to blame. Despite their good intentions, they both chose to play it safe, while sidestepping the disinformation long peddled by the gun lobby. Reformers built the strongest movement for “gun sense” that this nation had ever seen after the Parkland high school shooting, which incorporated surviving students and parents from prior school shootings in Newtown and Columbine. But what its advocates failed to realize is that the movement for gun rights was even stronger.
Money on its own rarely moves people for very long. But what people may believe tends to resonate more, whether even one word of it is true. There are few more powerful emotions to move groups of people at once like fear. This is where the movement for gun rights and the movement “to make America great again” meet.
Donald Trump has flip-flopped over guns throughout his life, the last time in 2019 over better background checks after the El Paso and Dayton shootings. One doesn’t have to look back very far to find posters in online gun forums doubting his loyalty. But he seems to have proven himself to most pro-gun people today.
President Trump along with allies and followers continue to claim that he is the only one keeping tyranny in America at bay. Even as his followers, including paramilitaries like the Proud Boys and the National Front and the expanding ranks of federal immigration enforcement agents, gradually impose an armed presence loyal to the president across the land.
This is the kind of outcome that many gun rights activists have long said they feared. Considering how their alleged evidence has always been nothing more than a fairy tale may help explain why President Trump and his armed allies and troops are the ones imposing what looks like an emerging tyranny today, while our daily violence from guns goes on.
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Minneapolis Mass Shooting Exposes Trump-GOP Lies on Crime and Gun Violence, Critics Say
"Trump will send the military into DC to pick up litter and arrest homeless people, but won't do a damn thing to end the gun violence epidemic killing our kids," said one healthcare advocate.
Aug 27, 2025
Another horrific mass shooting that left multiple children dead and injured has once again ignited a wave of fury at Republican lawmakers who refuse to take action to stop gun violence.
Two children—ages 8 and 10—were killed when a shooter fired through the windows of a church at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis on Wednesday morning. Another 17 people, including 14 more children, were also injured in the attack before the shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Minneapolis police say the shooter carried out the attack, which is now being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism, using three weapons: a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, not even eight months into 2025, there have already been 286 mass shootings—defined as cases in which four or more people are shot or killed—in the United States just this year, averaging more than one per day.
Gun violence is the number-one killer of children in the US, causing more deaths each year than car accidents, poisonings, and cancer. The victims of the shooting in Minneapolis join the more than 800 children killed and more than 2,200 injured by firearms this year.
Like dozens of mass shootings before it, Wednesday's deadly attack has stoked calls in Minnesota and around the country from Democratic lawmakers and gun control advocates for stricter gun laws, which have been repeatedly shot down by Republicans in Congress.
"We need better laws on the books nationally," said Minnesota's Democratic senator, Amy Klobuchar. "When you have so much access to guns right now and so many guns out there on the streets, you're going to continue to see these kinds of mass shootings."
"Don't just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now," said Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. "These kids were literally praying. It was the first week of school. They were in a church."
"They should be able to go to school or church in peace without the fear or risk of violence, and their parents should have the same kind of assurance," Frey said. "These are the sort of basic assurances that every family should have every step of the day, regardless of where they are in our country."
Congress has not passed a significant piece of gun legislation since 2022, when it passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in the wake of the horrific school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
That law, which was supported by just 15 Republicans, introduced some modest reforms—including extended background checks for firearm purchasers under 21, funding for state red flag laws, and the closure of gun purchasing loopholes.
However, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) only agreed to negotiate the bill if Democrats abandoned more ambitious reforms, such as bans on high-capacity magazines and universal background checks.
Since its passage, even this watered-down piece of legislation has been fought aggressively by Republican lawmakers backed by the gun industry's lobbying arm, the National Rifle Association, who have attempted to have it repealed.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to present an action plan to reverse any law that the Department of Justice determines has "impinged on the Second Amendment rights of our citizens."
Through executive orders, Trump has rolled back efforts under the Biden administration to regulate ghost guns and enhance background checks.
The administration has also choked off more than $800 million in grants to local gun violence prevention groups and pushed for "concealed carry reciprocity" legislation, which would require all states to honor concealed carry permits issued by other states.
Instead of stricter gun control measures, Trump has personally advocated for schools to arm teachers and focus on improving mental healthcare—even as he's rolled back rules ensuring Americans have access to that care.
"Until we have more elected officials willing to place gun safety over allegiance to the gun lobby, more and more families will face unbearable suffering from random acts of violence," said Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) on Wednesday. "Congress could—and should—pass stricter gun safety laws, but continues to cave to the gun lobby."
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) added: "The United States continues to be the only country where school shootings are a regular occurrence. We must stop this epidemic of gun violence and finally put the lives of our kids first."
Other advocates noted the contrast between Trump's response to the imaginary "crime wave" in Washington, DC, where he has initiated a militarized takeover, and his lack of interest in fighting America's endless wave of gun violence.
"Guns are the leading cause of death for kids in the US," said Melanie D'Arrigo, the executive director of the Campaign for New York Health. "Trump will send the military into DC to pick up litter and arrest homeless people, but won't do a damn thing to end the gun violence epidemic killing our kids."
Charles Idelson, a former communications director for National Nurses United, said: "If Trump wants to pretend he is 'fighting crimes,' stop protecting the pro-gun violence cabal."
Update: This report, which originally referred to the shooter as a "gunman" has been corrected to accurately reflect new information about the gender identity of the shooter, who has been identified as Robin Westman, a transgender woman.
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