People take part in candle light vigil following a mass shooting at Umpqua Community College
Overnight, some details emerged from Thursday's mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, that killed at least nine and wounded seven others.
The shooter has been identified as 26-year old man who apparently had no connection with the college. He died at the scene. (For more details on the killer, click here as I'm not going to give him the "limelight" that he was apparently seeking.) According to some, the killer, "armed with three pistols and a semiautomatic rifle," targeted Christians:
“He said, ‘Good, because you’re a Christian, you’re going to see God in just about one second,'” Boylan’s father, Stacy, told CNN, relaying his daughter’s account while she underwent surgery to treat a gunshot to her spine.
“And then he shot and killed them.”
Another account came from Autumn Vican, who described to NBC News what her brother J.J. witnessed in the room where the shootings occurred. According to NBC: “Vicari said at one point the shooter told people to stand up before asking whether they were Christian or not. Vicari’s brother told her that anyone who responded ‘yes’ was shot in the head. If they said ‘other’ or didn’t answer, they were shot elsewhere in the body, usually the leg.”
Amidst the horror there were
acts of heroism, like that of:
... 30-year-old Chris Mintz, the student and Army vet who was shot at least five times while charging straight at the gunman in an effort to save others.
Mintz did so on the sixth birthday of his son, Tyrik.
“It’s my son’s birthday, it’s my son’s birthday,” he was heard to say as he lay wounded.
And while some in the media tried to blame the shooting on the school for being a "gun-free zone," that was, in fact,
untrue.
And in case you missed it, by sure to watch or read President Obama's impassioned response to this latest mass killing:
Earlier this year, I answered a question in an interview by saying, "The United States of America is the one advanced nation on Earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense gun-safety laws—even in the face of repeated mass killings.” And later that day, there was a mass shooting at a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana. That day! Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine. The conversation in the aftermath of it. We've become numb to this.
And indeed we have.