The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms said at a press conference Friday that 13 firearms were recovered from the person and the residence of Oregon mass shooter Christopher Harper Mercer.
The 26-year-old who shot and killed nine people at Umpqua Community College Thursday before losing his own life in a shootout with police had legal possession of all the guns, the ATF reported.
The ATF said all the weapons were purchased legally, either by Mercer or his family members. Mercer was also wearing a flak jacket, which included five ammunition magazines.
President Obama has hammered on the theme that America is the only industrialized nation that has repeated mass shootings and he blamed “gun violence” on the nation’s lack of gun control. He has advocated “common sense” proposals such as a universal background check using a centralized database across the 50 states.
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What this new information from ATF demonstrates is that the kinds of gun control that the prohibition lobby has been pushing, namely the “universal background checks,” would not have prevented the tragedy in Oregon, said Dave Workman, senior editor of TheGunMag.com.
“The shooter reportedly had a clean record, and according to the ATF, he purchased several of those guns,” Workman said. “All the firearms were legally purchased from a firearms dealer, so background checks would have been involved.”
Obama said he knew he would be criticized for trying to “politicize” the tragic shooting but said that exactly what needed to happen in order to rein in “gun violence.”
But none of the president’s gun restrictions would have prevented Thursday’s mass shooting at the community college, said Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president and founder of the Second Amendment Foundation.
“None of the gun control proposals that Obama or the gun control crowd are proposing would have stopped this terrible tragedy,” Gottlieb said. “They are being intellectually dishonest. They are also being dishonest calling for new ‘gun safety’ legislation. This has nothing to do with gun safety. They know that everyone supports gun safety so they are using that term to manipulate the debate.”
If the president and his allies are successful in exploiting the rash of high-profile shootings, what will happen is law abiding gun owners will be harassed by new laws while thugs like Mercer will continue to cause more sorrow and tragedy, Gottlieb said.
What Gottlieb, Workman and other gun rights advocates have repeatedly advised is that “no gun zones” are what encourage would-be killers to invade a public space such as a school and start shooting.
Umpqua Community College had one security guard who was unarmed.
“Gun control failed miserably here,” said Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America. “The murderer chose a gun-free zone. All but two of our mass murders since 1950 have taken place in gun-free zones.”
CBS and the Associated Press both reported the UCC campus is a gun-free zone, and quoted the college’s security policy, which states: “Possession, use, or threatened use of firearms (including but not limited to BB guns, air guns, water pistols, and paint guns) ammunition, explosives, dangerous chemicals, or any other objects as weapons on college property, except as expressly authorized by law or college regulations, is prohibited.”
According to NBC News, UCC had considered hiring armed security for the campus. School officials ultimately rejected the idea. According to retired UCC President Joe Olson, “We thought we were a very safe campus, and having armed security officers on campus might change the culture.” That “culture” now appears to have been changed, possibly forever.
Meanwhile, others were casting blame on the Republican Party and the National Rifle Association.
Andy Parker, whose daughter Alison was the Virginia television reporter shot to death on live TV in August, penned an emotional column for the New York Daily News, imploring lawmakers to pass responsible gun laws in the wake of a mass shooting Thursday in Oregon. “This has to stop,” he wrote, continuing with the following passage, picking up on Obama’s talking points of “common sense” measures, the exact same points hammered by billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Every Town Against Gun Violence.
“I was a Reagan Republican years ago. I have slowly watched the party devolve into something Reagan wouldn’t recognize today – nor would he be a part of it.
“Republican legislators across the country refuse to consider common sense measures to prevent the horrific gun violence that kills our loved ones each and every day. By refusing to act, they are aiding and abetting domestic terrorism.
“Shame on them for being the cowards that they are. Is the support of a fringe element of the NRA so important that they are willing to accept our children as collateral damage? We are at war in this country, and we must win – whatever it takes.
“When I heard about this shooting in Oregon, I thought, this can’t be. Not this soon. I knew it would happen again. We are a country with a strong gun culture. But I wasn’t expecting it to be this soon.”