As the dust settles on another horrific campus shooting in the US everyone is once again wading into the debate on the country’s gun ownership laws and how they might be aiding these fame-seeking murderers.

We know that Obama gave a speech imploring Democrats and Republicans to unite and alter those gun ownership laws, but how did Donald Trump respond in a Nashville address on Saturday? Below from Newser:

Trump criticized [sic] “gun-free zones,” saying that the Oregon shootings could have been limited if instructors or students had been armed. He said better mental health care would help curb future shootings.

“Many states and many cities are closing their mental health facilities and closing them down, and they’re closing them because they don’t have the funding,” he said. “And we have to start looking much stronger into mental health.”

While Trump warned that “no matter what you do, you will always have problems,” he argued that it doesn’t make sense to limit access to firearms.

“It’s not the guns,” Trump said during his hourlong speech. “It’s the people, it’s these sick people.”

He also criticized President Barack Obama’s comments in response to the shootings as “divisive”…

“I’m a very, very big Second Amendment person,” [he said].

Of course he did, he was speaking in Nashville and they like their gun rights down there in that neck of the woods.  It has emerged that shooter Christopher Harper-Mercer had himself quite an array of weapons as Gawker reports, much to his father’s disgust:

…police have confiscated 14 guns from Harper-Mercer…all of the gunman’s weapons had been purchased legally—either by Harper-Mercer himself or by a relative. Harper-Mercer’s father, Ian Mercer [said] that he had not known his son owned so many weapons. (Harper-Mercer’s parents divorced 10 years ago; he lived with his mother.)

“How was he able to compile that kind of arsenal?” Mercer asked, going on to say that the killings “would not have happened” if his son had not been able to get his hands on the weapons.

“It has to change,” Mercer said. “How can it not? Even people that believe in the right to bear arms, what right do you have to take someone’s life?”

Now the stories of how he terrorised his victims has been well-documented, requesting some to beg for their lives before killing them, but he chose one student to fulfil a rather important mission. Here’s TIME:

Bonnie Schaan, the mother of 16-year-old Cheyeanne Fitzgerald, said she was told by her 16-year-old daughter that the gunman gave someone an envelope and told him to go to a corner of the classroom.

Harper-Mercer said the person “‘was going to be the lucky one,’” Schaan told reporters outside a hospital where her daughter’s kidney was removed after she was shot.

Relatives of other survivors of the shooting that killed nine also said Harper-Mercer gave something to a student in the class.

Pastor Randy Scroggins, whose 18-year-old daughter Lacey escaped without physical injuries, said she told him that the gunman called to a student, saying: “‘Don’t worry, you’re the one who is going to survive.’”

Harper-Mercer then told the student that inside the shooter’s backpack was “all the information that you’ll need, give it to the police,” Scroggins said, citing the account by his daughter…

The law enforcement official who disclosed the existence of the manifesto did not reveal its contents but described it as an effort to leave a message for law enforcement.

Mercer was armed with at least six guns and five ammunition magazines when he stormed the Umpqua Community College on Thursday, with the other eight recovered from his apartment in the ensuing police search.

Regarding Trump’s statements that the damage could have been limited if instructors and students had been armed, why does everyone seem to think this would result in less violence ensuing? This post on Gawker summing that up well…

You want to know how many mass shootings have occurred in the U.S. in the past 1 004 days? A mass shooting, by the way, is defined in the Guardian as ‘four or more people shot in one incident’, and those criteria point to an astounding 994 separate incidents.

However you look at those stats there is something systemically wrong with a society that refuses to address that head on. We have our faults, those being obvious and glaring, but to stick your head in the sand ostrich style and refuse to acknowledge a problem like this makes America look increasingly like a country that might deserve Donald Trump as president.

[sources:newser&gawker&time&guardian]