10-01-2015, 10:50 PM
(10-01-2015, 09:34 PM)Maggot Wrote: Its really tough to know if a person is serious enough to do the unthinkable. The finger pointing should be ridiculous after the fact and I would imagine a person would have to be pretty fucked up for years before snapping and losing any empathy they might have had at some point in their lives. At some point in the past something happened that created the domino effect that made this come to pass. He lost the ability to look at himself in someone else's shoes. The gun was the tool he found easiest to use.
Exactly. That's what Obama said today, "it should not be so easy for someone who wants to inflict harm onto others to get a hold of a gun."
A gun is the easiest and most convenient (and thus most common) way for someone with such intentions to carry through on them.
Anyway, today's school shooter has been identified as Chris Harper Mercer. His age has been corrected from the governor's earlier statement: he was 26-years-old, not 20-years-old. He had two pistols and a rifle, which were recovered from the scene.
The number of victims has been revised to 10 dead and 7 wounded.
Umpqua Community College is a gun-free zone. Concealed carry is legal in Oregon, but not on that campus. The school security guard is unarmed.
So, some people will inevitably say that more needs to be done in screening via universal background checks and the like, especially if it turns out he had a diagnosed mental illness or a disqualifying arrest or got the guns at a gun show without a background check.
And, other people will say we just need better enforcement of existing laws, or that the killer would have been stopped if good/responsible gun owners had been allowed to carry on-campus.
And on it goes...