On October 1, a 26-year-old man opened fire at Umpqua Community College in Rosewood, Oregon, killing nine people and injuring nine others. After being wounded by police during an exchange of gunfire, the gunman, Christopher Harper-Mercer, ran back into the classroom where he had done most of the shooting and killed himself.
According the the New York Times, law enforcement officials said Harper-Mercer was carrying three guns. Witnesses report that the shooter asked about people’s religion before firing, but authorities have not provided a motive.
The recent shooting has begun another round of debate on gun control, with strong opinions all over the board, beginning with Harper-Mercer’s parents. CNN reported that Harper-Mercer’s mother, Laurel Harper, had posted comments online complaining about states that consider a loaded magazine in the house the same as a loaded gun, stating “I keep all my mags full. I keep two full mags in my Glock case. And the ARs and AKs all have loaded mags. No one will be ‘dropping’ by my house uninvited.”
Ian Mercer, the shooter’s father, said that the shooting would not have happened if his son had not had access to 14 guns, all of which were confirmed by federal officials to have been bought legally by Mercer or a family member in the past three years.
Senate Democrats have begun the push for new gun control laws. Their bill package includes expanding background checks, and not allowing a purchase to go through before a background check is complete – a sale can go forward if a background check is not completed within 72 hours according to current laws. “Congress has become an accomplice in these murders,” Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said at the press conference where he announced the new legislation.
Many of the presidential candidates have much to say about this matter. Dr. Ben Carson made some of the more controversial remarks when he told ABC News the he “would ask everybody to attack the gunman,” and said on “Fox & Friends” later that day that “I would not just stand there and let him shoot me.”
The Huffington Post reported that Carson defended his statements later, saying, “I want to plant in people’s minds what to do in a situation like this,” and that there is a need to address the amount of gun violence in the US, perhaps by enacting stricter gun control laws for people with mental illness.
This has also reignited the conversation on mental illness and the correct way to deal with it. In an interview for “Meet the Press,” Donald Trump, in response to President Obama’s statement against gun violence after the shooting, said “Guns, no guns, doesn’t matter. You have people that are mentally ill and they’re going to come through the cracks and they’re going to do things that people will not even believe are possible.”
John Oliver, on his show Last Week Tonight, took an opposing stance to Trump. “The aftermath of a mass shooting might actually be the worst time to talk about mental health,” he said. “The vast majority of mentally ill people are nonviolent and the vast majority of gun violence is committed by non-mentally-ill people. In fact, mentally ill people are far likelier to be the victims of violence rather than the perpetrators.”
The shooting has had ramifications all over the country, including here at Stern. Over vacation, all students received emails about tighter security measures that would take effect once students returned to campus, including most dormitory buildings being locked. Students must scan their IDs in order to open the door, instead of it being unlocked and students showing their ID to the guard as they walk in.
At orientation this year, there was a mandatory active shooter training. Many students at the time were probably sitting there just wondering when it would be over. In the light of these recent events, however, it was definitely a good thing to make students attend. “I’m grateful now that I was forced to sit through that,” one student said. “You never think something like that could happen here, but you just never know. The students in Oregon probably never thought that it would happen there, either.”