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10 Confirmed Dead In Shooting at Oregon's Umpqua Community College

CNN and other sources report that an attacker, now in custody, shot and killed a reported ten people, and wounded another 20, at Oregon's Umpqua Community College, about three hours south of Portland, and described by CNN as "technically a gun-free zone." Students are being evacuated to a nearby fairgrounds, and local authorities advise anyone to avoid the area of the college. Wikipedia editors are also quickly compiling information about the attack. More news on the attack is still breaking; expect updates here.

16 of 1,165 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Gun-free zone? by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I guess it means they were trying not to get shot, trying to establish a safe place, and rejecting the primacy of the gun.

    Yeah, and look how well that's been working out for them.

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  2. For the Record by DumbSwede · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Oregon has some of the Nation’s most liberal gun laws Gun Laws in Oregon

    I personally do not advocate the total abolition of guns, but in light of the repeated incidents of gun violence and mass shoots, it would seem to make sense to review what works and what doesn’t work in preventing these sad events.

    For those that support total bans, this put those in areas where police protection or assistance is miles away at an awful disadvantage to criminals.

    For those that resist even the most minimal of background checks and waiting periods, you are so devoted to your Gun ideology that you can’t see there is a middle ground that can save lives.

    For those that scream we need to be able to stop authoritarian governments should things go wrong, that boat had sailed sometime in the early 20th Century. You aren’t going effect political change with guns – period. This group especially worries me, as they include some of the most rabid bigots you will ever run into, and are convinced the rise of minorities in America is a precursor to the end of times and a plot by the New World Order.

    We need to do something better and I’m I’m tending to tighter controls not less.

  3. Re:What about the rights of those injured by firea by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 1, Interesting

    1) Before you go around accusing the NRA of being terrorist, ask yourself, which one of them have actually committed a terrorist act?
    2) There's not a chance in hell you'll ever ban guns. Even if you did, that would never get rid of them. So why not look for a practical solution instead of going after something that you'll never achieve with any measure of success? Politicians who promise to ban guns are the real corrupt ones because they know they can't, they just want votes.
    3) Fun fact: Nearly all of the mass shooters in America have been left wing activists, and nearly all of them have been in urban areas, where firearm restriction is the tightest, rather than being in rural areas where almost everywhere you look it is perfectly legal to discharge a firearm.

  4. Re:Gun-free zone? by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    FWIW, most military bases are gun-free zones. You are not allowed to carry firearms unless you are an MP. Yes, it makes zero sense, but that's the actual regulation.

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  5. What the hell is wrong with people? by yodleboy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And i don't necessarily mean the shooter. If early reports prove accurate "The night before the attack, the alleged shooter appears to have had a conversation with others online about his intentions, the source said."

    There's your problem right there. A person with issues made what might have been a final plea for help the night before and everyone just blew it off. Depending on what he said, at the very least he could have been held for making terroristic threats and possibly had a psych eval. Noooo. No one wants to get involved. It has f-all to do with guns. We'd rather lock up and ignore some guy with 1/2 oz of weed than commit and help the mentally ill. When the U.S. gets serious about mental health and people start getting involved instead of letting their friends self destruct, we'll see these events decrease.

    In the meantime, I reserve the right to defend myself and my family. That doesn't mean playing hero. That means getting them out of harms way. If out of harms way means past an active shooter, then at least we have a chance.

  6. Re:Gun-free zone? by x0ra · · Score: 3, Interesting

    where do you get your facts from ? any study on the subject ?

  7. Re:Public Healthcare / Mental Healthcare by TheSync · · Score: 1, Interesting

    This situation will never really be fixed until the US wakes up to the fact that it is the only modern nation in the world that doesn't have a proper public healthcare system with guaranteed access to all, regardless of ability to pay.

    Then how could a man stab 5 people to death in Japan?

    You can make mental health care as free as you want, but it is not going to mean the mentally ill will come get care.

  8. Re: Gun-free zone? by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Exercised restraint due to the large crowd.

    This is a good point that gets overlooked a lot.

    You'd be a complete fool to try and return fire against a target that you have not identified in a crowd. You're just as likely to add to the problem as to solve it, and even might end up being mistaken for the active shooter yourself.

    I have many guns, I sometimes carry a gun (I have a CHL in Texas). I would never, ever, ever draw my gun and fire at someone unless I had a clear and open line of fire, I was 100% sure of my target, and I was directly saving lives by stopping someone who was clearly intent on killing innocent people.

    If there are other people either in front of or behind him, around him, or I'm unsure of the situation, I would not draw and fire.

    I'm both legally and morally responsible for every round I put downrange, I would never wish to place an innocent in harms way.

    I own and carry guns responsibly, I am not "Rambo", and real life is NOT a movie.

  9. Re:Description of Shooter by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You left out WHITE... Most of these idiots are white.

    Actually, not. It turns out non-white, non-Asian, people are (currently in the US) more prone to mass murder, both offenders as a percentage of their population and as a victim-count per-capita of offender's group's population.

    But their victims are more often also non-white, non-Asian, and the attacks generally "aren't news". (When was the last time you heard the national media do a big news event on a drive-by or other mass shooting in the poorer residential areas of Chicago, Springfield, New York City, Philadelphia, or DC?) It's another example of how black (or Chicano, etc.) lives DON'T matter - to the news media.

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  10. Re:People like you are the problem by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The answer is less guns, not more.

    This part of your post is wrong. More guns, less guns, won't make any difference, has nothing to do with the issue. It is just a sideshow.

    NO, the answer is health care. Plenty of other countries have more guns per capita than the US and don't suffer these issues. You know why? Because people are looked after and get the help they need, rather than some nonsense ridiculous purely free market approach.

    This is where you're correct.

    I'm a far-left "you can have my guns when you take them from my cold, dead hands" type...

    However, it is embarrassing that we don't have a free national health care system. We can afford 11 nuclear aircraft carriers, the largest most powerful military in the world, yet we have a horrible patchwork health system that does a crap job taking care of people in general.

  11. Heads in the sand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    As an outsider looking in, seeing Ameria's gun crime stats it just seems insane the rules you have over there.
    America seems to have its head in the sand and doesn't want to admit it has a problem.
    "The right to bear arms" is always held up as the bastion of freedom, but its killing innocent people, that doesn't seem very free to me.
    There are perfectly valid reasons to own a gun, especially for farmers, or as a hobby but the problem is hand guns and automatic semi-automatic weapons.
    I live in a country (New Zealand) where almost nobody owns a handgun but where gun ownership rates are actually extremely high, mostly by farmers and for sport.
    Our gun crime is basically non-existant, police don't even carry hand guns.
    The thing is, if everybody doesn't have a gun, then you don't actually need guns to defend yourself with.
    To own a gun in this country is a privilege, not a right, you have to have a license to purchase both firearms and ammo and getting a license requires police checks and a knowledge test.
    Because of that, I couldn't feel safer. I don't have to worry about walking down the street and getting shot or some nutter walking into a school or theatre to kill me.
    If someone breaks into my home its extremely unlikely they will be carrying so I don't feel the need to keep one in my house to defend myself.

    The problem with guns is that the more that there are, the more that are needed to defend yourself so it becomes a vicious spiral of death.

    Get over yourself America, you can be free without all needing guns to defend yourself from each other, in fact, in my books I'm a lot more free than you are because I'm free to walk down the street or go into a school without fear of being shot at.

  12. The mental health system needs fixing! by ErichTheRed · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm from the gun-averse camp, but I'm well aware that nothing can be done to silence the gun lobby in this country. It's in the Constitution, and we're too diverse a country to ever support taking it out. You could have daily mass shootings of 50+ people and the NRA would still defend gun rights, with millions of owners right behind them. Even background check laws will never be strengthened beyond what's there already because people are going to assume the government will be coming for their guns.

    So, it seems to me that the next best thing would be to fix mental health care and make sure everyone has equal access to it. Who knows what happened, but it's most likely someone with an ax to grind who just happened to get triggered today. Right now, there's virtually no state-run inpatient mental health treatment beds outside of maybe the psychiatric ERs. You basically have to be Hannibal Lecter to get committed to an asylum now. There's also not that much support available in the community. Deinstitutionalization was supposed to get people out of the hospital -and- treat them on an outpatient basis, but they forgot the second part when states closed all the asylums.

  13. Re:Gun-free zone? by Coren22 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The places with the highest rates of gun violence all have bans on guns. Please prove me wrong, show me how taking away everyone's guns will make everyone safer, but every time I read news about shootings, it is in places where people aren't allowed to carry guns.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com...

    https://www.washingtonpost.com...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    If gun control is the answer, why is it that in at least two countries where NO guns are allowed, there are still mass shootings?

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    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  14. Re:Gun-free zone? by Coren22 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You mean like the one that happened in Sydney?

    http://news.slashdot.org/comme...

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    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  15. Lies about Australia by mi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    complete lack of massacres since 1996.

    They did not have that many to begin with, but there were two unrelated mass-shootings in Australia in 2011 — in addition to massacres not involving a fire-arm. So much for "complete lack".

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  16. Re:Gun-free zone? by Boronx · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's also worth noting that if Virginia were a nation, it would be number 2 on that list.