Yet another mass shooting left nine dead and seven wounded in the U.S. state of Oregon, on Oct. 1, 2015. The shooter, who was a student at Umpqua College, attacked the school, before being killed in a shootout with police.
President Obama made an impassioned plea for gun control to Congress and the American people, in the wake of the shooting.
“Our thoughts and prayers are not enough,” President Obama said to reporters, visibly angry and obviously tired of giving these statements. “We are not the only country on Earth who has people with mental illnesses that want to do harm to other people,” President Obama continued. “We are the only country who sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months.”
The shooter—identified as 26-year-old Chis Harper Mercer—owned 13 weapons that were seized by officials. Mercer stored six at the school and seven at his apartment.
Mercer’s weapons had all been purchased legally over the past three years, explained Celinez Nunez, assisted field agent for the Seattle division of the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Some of the weapons were bought by Mercer himself, while others were purchased by his family members. “The United States of America is the only advanced nation on Earth, in which we don’t have sufficient common-sense-gun-safety laws—even in the face of repeated mass-killing,” said President Obama. “It has become routine… We’ve become numb to this. We’ve talked about this after Columbine and Blacksburg, after Tucson, after Newtown, after Aurora, after Charleston. It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun.”
U.S. media reported that Mercer left behind a lengthy statement that addressed his loneliness. The statement also explained that Mercer was inspired by previous shootings.
According to The Telegraph, Mercer commented on a video-uploading site featuring footage of Vester Flanagan, the former newsreporter who shot dead two former colleagues live on air in August 2015.
“On an interesting note, I have noticed that so many people like him are all alone and unknown, yet when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows who they are,” wrote Mercer. “A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone. His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day. Seems the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight.”
Al Jazeera reports there has been 142 school shootings in the United States since the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012.