How Mass Shooters Get Their Guns

[workinclasszero]

How Mass Shooters Get Their Guns

Here are the origins of every gun used in the high-profile massacres of Obama’s presidency.

By Christina Cauterucci and Greta Weber



On Thursday, after Chris Harper Mercer shot and killed 9 people at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, President Obama gave the latest in a tragic series of addresses in response to mass shootings in the U.S. "It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm to get his or her hands on a gun," he said.

But it is remarkably easy to get your hands on a gun in this country. Of the 11 shootings that prompted Obama to give a public address, eight were committed by gunmen who’d bought at least some of their firearms legally, some just days before their massacres. Several had histories of criminal behavior and mental illness that fell just shy of prohibiting their gun purchases—and in one case, a bureaucratic slip-up in the routine FBI background check was at fault. Here’s how the guns in each attack came into the hands of the killers.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/10/how_roseburg_newtown_and_other_mass_shooters_got_their_guns.html

[Duckhunter935]

1. interesting

Lets look....

Shooting: Military base at Fort Hood, Texas
Legally purchased with a federal background check

Shooting: Gabrielle Giffords
Legally purchased with a federal background check

Shooting: Movie theater in Aurora, Colorado
Legally purchased with a federal background check

Shooting: Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin
Legally purchased with a federal background check

Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut
Legally purchased with a federal background check by parent, weapons stolen after he murdered the parent

Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C.
Legally purchased with a federal background check, prevented from buying a pistol due to him being out of state under existing federal law.

Military base at Fort Hood, Texas
Legally purchased with a federal background check

Those are just the first several, notice a pattern, legally purchased after passing the federally mandated background check. I think we need to strengthen the existing system myself as a good start.