Fresh calls to tighten US gun controls after mass shooting

There are calls for new measures to tighten gun controls in the United States following the latest mass shooting.

Nine people were killed when 26-year-old Chris Harper Mercer opened fire inside a classroom at an Oregon Community College yesterday.

The gunman, who shot dead an English professor and eight others, was identified as a student in the class who previously had been turned away from a private firearms training academy.

A day after the rampage at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg authorities sought a motive for the bloodiest US mass shooting among the dozens reported over the past two years.

As further details of the Roseburg shooting emerged, a former girlfriend of one of the wounded survivors, a US military veteran, revealed that his heroism in confronting the shooter may have saved others from being killed.

The state medical examiner has confirmed that the assailant, shot dead by police, had been identified as Christopher Harper-Mercer, 26, and that he was enrolled in the writing class in which Thursday's carnage unfolded.

The gunman carried six guns, body armor and five magazines of bullets with him to campus.
Seven more firearms were found with a stockpile of ammunition at the apartment he shared with his mother just outside Roseburg, a former timber town about 290km south of Portland.

Celinez Nunez, assistant special agent of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said all the weapons had been purchased legally...
  rte.ie
3/10/15
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