Four Killed with Parent-Purchased Gun in Bend, Oregon, School Shooting

Thursday afternoon, a 16-year-old from Bend, Oregon, shot his way into Silver Rail Elementary School and killed three children and a teacher. Just before 1 p.m. Somebody in a vehicle outside the school called 911 to report being shot at by a person with a long gun. About a minute later, dispatchers were buried in calls saying a shooter was inside the building. Police say he got in by firing at the locked doors, and one report notes that he apparently blew right past the secure vestibules the district says every one of its schools has. The building went into lockdown at 1:01 p.m., and the first officers arrived at 1:02. Moments later, the shooter was dead.

The children who died were 5, 8, and 11 years old. A 7-year-old and a 54-year-old teacher were critically injured and rushed to the hospital, and as of the latest reports, police still hadn’t released the names of any victims.

According to a law enforcement official who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, the shooter used a pump-action shotgun that his mother had purchased. Police themselves have only described the weapon publicly as a long gun, so that detail rests on the AP’s single anonymous source for now. What officials haven’t said is just as important. The shooter hasn’t been identified, police don’t know whether he had any connection to the school, and no motive has been offered. Right now we have a 16-year-old, a shotgun, and a body count.

Oregon is no stranger to school shootings. In 1998, a then-15-year-old Kip Kinkel opened fire at Thurston High School in Springfield, killing two classmates and wounding 25 others after killing his parents. Troutdale’s Reynolds High School saw a 15-year-old kill a student and wound a teacher in 2014 before taking his own life. Then in 2015, an incel- gunman killed nine people at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg. Those shootings are just the headliners, and now Bend gets added to the list as, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database, the state’s first deadly mass shooting at an elementary school.

Gov. Tina Kotek said her heart was absolutely broken, promised daily prayers for the children, parents, and educators, and urged Oregonians to hold each other close and pour as much love into the world as they can. She also thanked the first responders, which is the new go-to political statement after one of these tragedies happens and it carries no political weight whatsoever. A throwaway statement that is used in order to avoid talking about guns.

Conversely, Sen. Ron Wyden said the best way to honor the victims is to finally pass common-sense gun laws, which is at least a sentence with some policy in it. Neither statement brings back three kids and a teacher, but only one of them points at anything that might keep it from happening again.

Now I bet the gun nerds are already gearing up for a victory lap. Police say a community member who saw the shooter enter the school with a long gun followed him inside and shot him dead. OregonLive reported that the person was a parent of a student at the school, though police haven’t named them. Gov. Kotek called the intervention heroic and acknowledged the heavy emotional burden that comes with it. So, expect the “good guy with a gun” crowd to hold this up as proof.

To them I say, bravo, you finally got one.

It’s just too bad the good guy showed up after four people had already been fatally shot. Thank God, too, that this didn’t turn into a prolonged exchange of gunfire in a building full of kids, which is the part the bumper-sticker version never bothers to picture.

Also, Oregon isn’t just Portland, and plenty of the state, Central Oregon included, is a place where gun ownership is encouraged and a pump-action shotgun in a household surprises exactly nobody. Buying one is legal, and it isn’t the issue. How a 16-year-old got his hands on it and carried it into an elementary school is the issue.

If the AP’s source is right, this is yet another shooting where the gun came from a parent, and we’ve been down this road many times before. Jennifer and James Crumbley were convicted of involuntary manslaughter after their son’s rampage at Oxford High School. Colin Gray was sentenced to 15 years after he bought the gun his son used to kill four at Apalachee High School. And as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, Jeffrey Rupnow is still awaiting trial for allegedly allowing his daughter access to the guns she used in the shooting at Abundant Life Christian School.

We don’t know yet whether the shotgun in Bend was locked up, whether anyone knew the kid had access to it, or whether there were warning signs somebody ignored. It will be interesting to see whether anyone takes a hard look at that this time around.

Four people in Bend are dead, and two more are critically injured. Meanwhile, nothing will change.

To some, kids and teachers who are killed in these attacks are just the cost of doing business of keeping “shall not be infringed” the sacred law of this land.

(Sources)