Demonstrator George Starr said: “By coming here, Obama is going to politicise a tragedy by saying that you have to have gun control”.
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At Umpqua, for instance, a student can carry a gun with “written authorisation”, according to the college’s student handbook.
“I only wish a student had been armed”, he said.
In a ritual that has become both familiar and frustrating to him, President Barack Obama travelled to Oregon to console families of the victims of a community college shooting.
Several people said they were angry with the media, claiming reporters have covered up that last week’s shooting was a hate crime against Christians.
The gunman, Chris Harper Mercer, had no criminal record and had passed background checks to amass an arsenal of 13 weapons. This contrasted with Blackstone and ABC’s David Muir, who pointed out on World News Tonight that “the President is exploring the use of executive authority to close gun loopholes”.
While the White House tried so hard to make the masses believe that the president’s visit with the victims’ families of the Umpqua Community College privately had nothing to do with politics, the reports of Obama considering executive action on gun background checks outweighed that likely false interpretation of Obama’s visit.
The proposal to expand background checks originally was part of a package of considerations mulled after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., but was rejected after federal lawyers expressed concern that setting a numerical threshold could be legally challenged, and ATF officials voiced objections that it would be hard to enforce, the Post reported.
In Houston, one person was shot dead in a residential complex near Texas Southern University.
Houston police said the incident “does not involve an active shooter”, but the university nonetheless placed the campus on lockdown and cancelled classes for the rest of the day. “This is something we should politicise”.
Signs opposing the President’s visit referenced concerns about gun control, saying his visit was politicizing the issue.
“It viscerally offended me that he uses something like this to pursue his own ulterior motives – destroying this country, undermining America”, said the 62-year-old, who said he bought his first gun when he was 16 with proceeds from his paper route.
A few of the most poignant moments of Obama’s presidency have occurred in his role as consoler in chief.
From there, he boarded the Marine One helicopter for a short trip to the Roseburg Airport.
The president’s goal is to “make it harder and harder for law-abiding citizens to acquire firearms or firearm permits”, Schoeller added.
Nine more people were wounded in the shooting, which ended with the gunman taking his own life.
Just hours after the shooting last Thursday, Obama said gun violence “is something we should politicize”.
But that wasn’t enough for Michelle Finn, a Roseburg resident who attended the community college.
“I’m here to tell Obama he is not welcome in our county”.
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The public must “come together” to figure out how to keep deadly mass shootings from happening, President Barack Obama said Friday. For months prior to the attack, faculty and staff had debated whether to arm campus security officers, but they could not overcome their divisions on the issue.
