Multiple Shootings at Oregon's Umpqua Community College

Agreed. Don’t name the shooter. It will come out eventually. Don’t make that the focus.

Per CNN:

How sick is that? There were people egging him on. The shooter had 4 guns with him. A twisted “hero”? What has become of our society?

I haven’t heard any details ab.out the shooter. I feel awful for the families and friends of the 13, at least, killed.

“This is the only time I’ll ever be in the news. I’m so insignificant,”

Do people have an expectation that they’ll be famous?

I mean, other than the Andy Warhol “15 minutes” thing.


[QUOTE=""]
"This is the only time I'll ever be in the news. I'm so insignificant,"

Do people have an expectation that they’ll be famous?

[/QUOTE]

I think they do. Think about all the school shootings you know of… generally you know the names of the shooters but very few names of the victims. At least for a while, they become very famous, everyone talks about them for a week or several weeks, trying to understand their motives, discussing how they got the guns, etc.

I am so sad and frustrated. How is it possible that we cannot do anything to stop gun violence in the US? @dwhite - you are so right - if Sandy Hook did nothing to unite us to change gun laws - what will? This is going to continue to happen until a grassroots campaign captivates enough people to take on the NRA and. DO SOMETHING!

How many of these mass shootings have been committed using automatic weapons? Why are these guns even being sold?!!! Maybe eliminating the sale of automatic weapons could be the first baby step in the right direction.

Very few, if any have been committed with automatic weapons. Maybe you meant semiautomatic weapons.

@FilmerMom raises a good point, and I think I agree that we shouldn’t give these shooters so much fame.

However, I was wondering why they haven’t released the name. One theory that occurred to me is that they may not want to release the murderer’s name before they have identified all the victims. Since so many victims, killed and wounded, were sent to so many different hospitals, they need to verify who died, then they have to deal with the next of kin. This can take a while. Don’t know if this theory has any validity.

Supposedly the shooter was targeting Christians. According to a post from a grandson of woman who survived, he lined people up along a wall and asked if they were Christians. If they said yes, they were shot in the head. If they said no, they were shot in the legs.

The young relative I mentioned above knew the shooter, it turns out, as well as several of the victims. Not all the details have been released, so it may turn out she knows even more of them. This is a small, rural-area part of Oregon, very conservative and lots of church-going people. The shooter was a local kid. Even if the story about him asking kids their religion turns out to be true, it’s unlikely he was a Muslim anything. The families down there are loggers and farmers, or factory workers for the most part. Our relative went to HS with lots of those involved today, including the shooter. Everyone knew everyone. Her whole extended family is in shock.

^ That may be 100% true. On the other hand, it may be wrong.

Remember how after Columbine people talked about the brave girl who was shot when the shooter asked if she were a Christian, she said yes, then he shot her? Her family even wrote a book. But it never happened. Just not true. Sometimes these stories get out and take on a life of their own. But, as I said before, it could be true. I’ll wait and see.

Well, maybe I get points for trying, because I won’t get points for accuracy in my post #55… Law enforcement has identified the shooter. Out of respect for FilmerMom’s point, I won’t put it here. You can google it if you want.

These are the children of someone. If it were your child, wouldn’t you want to do some major gun control?

I’m sorry that I’m going to anger people, but this is really stupid and senseless and has to stop.
Guns were needed, at one point, in early colonists lives because the US was a wilderness. These people that rationalize (sickly) that guns are still needed, the kind of guns that kill the two-footed animal, are really a sick, paranoid group.

The paranoid lobby that claims it’s really all about mental illness but won’t give a dime to fund mental health, is directly responsible for putting weapons into the hands of the unstable.

I want my young adult children, their friends, acquaintances and their similar aged peers, at all of the colleges, to live full lives.

Well, actually, I was referring to an expectation of being famous before committing mass murder. It’s to be expected afterwards. Apparently the shooter felt he should have been something more than insignificant.

I don’t have any real detail, but our young relative and her family knew the shooter and several of the victims. She went to HS with them. These were homegrown kids in a quiet, conservative, working class area. Loggers, farmers, people you think of when you think “heartland”. If religion had anything to do with the shooting, it wasn’t because this was some radical outsider. It was someone many of them knew, and that makes it even more heartbreaking, I think.

I have not spoken to the relative, and I don’t know if the supposed online claims the shooter made yesterday were his and were true, but I’d like to think that someone would have said something.

And I’ll say it-WHY do we need weapons that do nothing but kill people in the hands of anyone? Is there really a legitimate reason for a gun that can shoot 30 people in a matter of minutes to even exist? This is so awful.

I live in one of the communities mentioned earlier in this thread where one of the earliest school shootings occurred almost 20 years ago. I have been teaching in a community college for over 25 years. This just hits too close to home and yet it is also a regular occurrence. Just saw a report on MSNBC that showed a 2015 calendar. Of the 294 days this year, we’ve had mass shootings on 274 of those days. I don’t think we can eliminate these shootings completely, but heaven knows we can do something to improve the situation. The prohibition on political posts on this forum keeps me from saying more. So very sad…

@JustOneDad Humm, hadn’t thought about an expectation that he should be famous. I suppose with reality shows, there is a skewed idea of what it takes to be famous.

You could read his statement (if it is his) as: he wanted to at least be “significant” and this is the only way he could see that he could attain that, due to his guarantee of fame posthumously.

Sad for him, but sadder for his victims. In my opinion, he needs to remain insignificant.

It IS NOT FAME. I want the shooter’s name broadcast. I want others who may have similar evil in mind to know that they will be loathed and likely hated by every decent human being.

Funny about the fame thing, I remember an episode of NCIS, where this guy was killing people to be famous, and in the end Gibbs works it so the guy is charged as a terrorist and homeland security keeps his identity a secret, so he never gets his fame. Not that there is any good reason to kill people, but it is really pathetic if someone killed so many simply to be famous. Given how senseless this appears, it wouldn’t surprise me if this clown sought fame.