He called on both US politicians and citizens to contribute to changing US gun laws, as mass shootings had become a tragic routine in the country. He also urged Americans to pay more attention to presidential candidates' positions on the issue of gun control during the upcoming election.
According to the Mass Shooting Tracker project, the incident in Roseburg became the 294th shooting in the United States where four or more people were killed or wounded so far in 2015.
On September 18, Dylann Roof, a white 21-year-old who identifies with racist apartheid groups, opened fire at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine African-American victims. Prosecutors decided to seek the death penalty in Roof's case.
Chris Harper Mercer, who has been identified as the male shooter, opened fire at the Umpqua Community College in the city, killing at least nine and injuring seven people before being fatally shot in an exchange of fire with police.
According to the Douglas County Sheriff's Office, the investigation into the deadly incident is still ongoing and the shooter's motives are still unclear.
The father of Anastasia Boylan, who was wounded by Harper Mercer, said that the shooter asked his victims to state their religion before shooting them.
Twitter user BodhiLooney, whose grandmother was in the college during the shooting, confirmed that Harper Mercer killed people if they answered positively to his question about being Christian.
“If they said yes, then they were shot in the head. If they said no, or didn’t answer, they were shot in the legs,” BodhiLooney said, as quoted by New York Post.
