Umpqua Community College Shooting (2015)

I can't believe no one has talked about this. and I can't believe I forgot about this so quick. Is it the result of the lack of media reporting deliberately? Is it because it has happened one too many times. Either way, here's a recap of the context of the shooting that's quite interesting.

Deaths: 10 (including the perpetrator)
Non-fatal injuries: 7–9
October 1, 2015
10:38 a.m. – 10:48 a.m.

"Christopher Harper Mercer who was a student in the writing class, entered the classroom and fired a warning shot. Some witnesses said he then forced fellow students to the center of the classroom. Before he opened fire on the other students, he deliberately spared one student's life so that student could deliver a package from him to police. He forced this student to sit at the back of the classroom and watch as he continued shooting with two handguns.

Harper-Mercer first shot the assistant English professor at point-blank range. He allegedly asked two students for their religion, shooting them after they gave him a response. Other witnesses said he asked if students were Christians, telling those who replied in the affirmative that they would go to heaven as he shot them, although one victim was agnostic and another was pagan. Some students were shot multiple times; one woman was struck several times in the stomach while trying to close a classroom door. One witness said he made a woman beg for her life before shooting her, shot another woman when she tried to reason with him, and shot a third woman in the leg after she tried to defend herself with a desk. One victim, Sarena Dawn Moore, was killed while trying to climb back into a wheelchair at his orders.

Two plainclothes detectives from the Roseburg Police Department were the first to respond to the scene. They arrived at the hallway of Snyder Hall at 10:44, six minutes after the first 9-1-1 call was received. Two minutes later, Harper-Mercer reloaded his handguns and leaned out of the classroom, firing several shots at the officers. They fired three shots in return, hitting him once in the right side. After two more minutes of shooting at the officers, the wounded Harper-Mercer retreated into the classroom and killed himself with a single shot to his head."

Once again, Columbine was brought up when this shooting happened, with claims that Christopher was inspired by what happened during Columbine and his questioning of the people's religion was similar to what the boys did. I quote:

"If this guy was white it would have been a racial thing, if he was totally black it would have been a racial thing. The media's reporting of this is all about branding. And they're branding it as a religion thing. During the shooting, Christopher was asking if people were christians then he would shoot them in the head if they said yes - but it was somewhat a false scenario that is who he intended to kill, just like Columbine, where the boys asked "Do you believe in God" and if anyone said yes they would shoot them. Wrong, in fact what it was that Christopher was trying - in his own sick twisted way - to be compassionate. In a horribly twisted way he would ask them "Do you have religion" and if they said yes he would respond "then I'll see you soon." "

Always wondered why this didn't get more media attention considering the number of people killed and the fact that he singled out a specific subset of people (Christians). I can either guess that the shooting was overshadowed by other events and wasn't helped due to the fact that Mercer died. The other guess, although imbot into conspiracy theories, would be that the liberal media doesn't want to reinforce the notion that Christians were being singled out in a time when Donald Trump is thriving... On a side note, Dylann Roof singled out Christians too, but everyone only focusses on the skin color if the victims.

X-Raided wrote:

Always wondered why this didn't get more media attention considering the number of people killed and the fact that he singled out a specific subset of people (Christians). I can either guess that the shooting was overshadowed by other events and wasn't helped due to the fact that Mercer died. The other guess, although imbot into conspiracy theories, would be that the liberal media doesn't want to reinforce the notion that Christians were being singled out in a time when Donald Trump is thriving... On a side note, Dylann Roof singled out Christians too, but everyone only focusses on the skin color if the victims.

I've wondered the same. My only guess is that by now, these shootings are so commonplace that they are just forgotten in a few weeks. Also, like you said, it was probably quickly overshadowed. The month after this was the Paris terrorist attacks which was much bigger. Then that guy Robert Lewis Dear shot up the Planned Parenthood later that month (which was very politically charged so people paid some attention) and in Early December was the Sen Bernardino terrorist shooting. This kind of random unprovoked violence is pretty frequent in recent years and this period of time was particularly busy.

I feel like media reporting these days have alot to do with it, such as how they want to sell it, how much they want to feed into our minds so we would continue talking about it. It's sick, but these days the media chooses what they wanna sensationalise. Down to what kind of person the perpetrator is.

Columbine is the first of its kind and the media has never touched a massacre such as that before, it was fresh, it was innocent, and that's why it is as legendary as it is today, basically being the Mother of all mass shootings in America.

The Orlando club shooting took 1st place for being the worst mass shooting in the US thus far and that monster killed 50 including himself and it got press coverage of what, 5 days? basically a week? No one is talking about it anymore. To look it up now I would have to depend on blog reports or something, month-old tweets. What has happened? Are we actually.....bored of gun violence now the next time we hear it?

This is our generation today folks. If a shooter could take a selfie or a snapchat of him about to shoot a person, upload it on twitter and get massive retweets on it we're basically zombies and partially detached from reacting the way we're supposed to towards tragedies.

But then you have Kip Kinkel.. never talked about now, and was never really a focus-point for "gun violence" in school.

Kip Kinkel nearly killed as many people as Dylan did alone, and injured many more - but he is not talked about in the same light as Dylan. That is the same deal with this other guy.

I am aware of the shootings before Columbine, even the boys brought it up, I think the way Columbine was covered made the difference + two gunmen + suicide. There's something about Columbine that made the beginner's mark.