UPDATE: Oregon, US Gunman Named As Chris Harper Mercer; President Obama Says America Made 'Political Choice' To Allow Mass Shootings

Chris Harper Mercer who has been identified by US media as the gunman in Oregon shooting in which at least nine people died and dozens more were wounded

A gunman opened fire inside a classroom at a rural Oregon college, killing at least nine people before dying in a shoot-out with police. One survivor said he demanded his victims state their religion before he started shooting. The attack shattered the first week of classes at Umpqua Community College in the small timber town of Roseburg, about 180 miles south of Portland.

The killer was identified as 26-year-old Chris Harper Mercer. The authorities shed no light on his motive and said they were investigating.

However, a number of news outlets have reported how his online presence indicates support for the IRA and a morbid interest in the Sandy Hook massacre.

Irish Independent report continues:

A Myspace page bearing Mercer's name features pictures of masked gunmen and references to the Irish Republican army. The account features an apparent front page of 'An Phoblacht', with the headlines 'British Army Could Not Defeat IRA'. Another image bears the caption 'IRA undefeated army'.

Mercer also appeared to be prolific user of file-sharing system Bittorrent.

According to The Guardian, an email address 'ironcross45@gmail.com' was found to be associated with Mercer via a public records search, and is linked to an account that bears the username 'Lithium_Love'.

The final video uploaded by this user to the site, just three days ago, was a BBC documentary called 'Surviving Sandy Hook' about the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.

Witnesses to the shooting have been giving their account of what happened.

U.S. President Barack Obama pauses while speaking about the shootings in Oregon from the White House in Washington October 1, 2015. Obama on Thursday angrily repeated that gun laws needed to be changed after the latest mass murder in Oregon and took aim at the powerful gun lobby for blocking reform. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Hannah Miles, 19, was in her writing class when her teacher got a call from security saying the school was in lockdown. She heard gunshots from a neighbouring classroom.

She said that huddled together in the locked classroom, the students and teacher heard a footsteps outside and a man's voice call out to them: "Come on out, come on out." They remained quiet and did not open the door.

Police soon arrived, and after students were convinced that it was indeed officers, they opened the door.

"It was like a huge burden had been lifted," she said. "A huge sigh of relief that we were going to be OK."

Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said at least two officers acted heroically in the shoot-out, but it was not clear if the gunman was killed by authorities or whether he took his own life.

At a news conference, a visibly angry Mr Hanlin said he would not name the shooter.

"I will not name the shooter. I will not give him the credit he probably sought prior to this horrific and cowardly act," he said.

"It's been a terrible day. Certainly this is a huge shock to our community."

Mercer had been living at an apartment complex in nearby Winchester. Yellow police tape surrounded the building on Thursday night.

A neighbour, Bronte Hart, said Mercer would "sit by himself in the dark in the balcony with this little light".

She said a woman she believed to be Mercer's mother also lived upstairs and was "crying her eyes out" on Thursday.

Distressed parents rushed to the county fairgrounds, where students were being taken by bus to reunite with families.

The sheriff said 10 people were dead and seven wounded. An FBI spokeswoman said the gunman was included in that number.

Earlier, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said 13 people had been killed.

Hours after the attack, a frustrated president Barack Obama spoke to reporters at the White House, saying the US is becoming numb to mass shootings and that the shooters have "sickness" in their minds.

Repeating his support for tighter gun-control measures, the president said thoughts and prayers are no longer enough in such situations because they do nothing to stop similar attacks from happening a few weeks or months later.

He challenged voters wanting to confront the problem to vote for elected officials who will act.

Police began receiving calls about a campus shooting at 10.38am local time. The school has a single unarmed security guard.

Kortney Moore, 18, said she was in a writing class when a shot came through the window and hit the teacher in the head.

The gunman then entered the Snyder Hall classroom and told people to get on the floor, she told the Roseburg News-Review newspaper. He told people to stand up and state their religion before opening fire.

The gunfire sparked panic as students ran for safety and police and ambulances rushed to the scene.

Some students were in tears. Police lined them up in a car park with their hands over their heads and searched them.

Roseburg is no stranger to school gun violence. A student at the local high school shot and wounded a fellow student in 2006.

The sheriff has been vocal in opposing gun-control legislation.

In 2013, Mr Hanlin sent a letter to Vice President Joe Biden after the shooting at a Newtown, Connecticut, school, declaring that he and his deputies would refuse to enforce new gun-control restrictions "offending the constitutional rights of my citizens".

Before the Roseburg shooting, a posting on the message-board site 4chan included a photo of a crudely drawn frog used regularly in Internet memes with a gun and warned other users not to go to school on Thursday in the north-west.

The messages that followed spoke of mass shootings, with some egging on and even offering tips to the original poster. It was unclear if the messages were tied to the shooting because of the largely anonymous nature of the site.

Roseburg is in Douglas County, a politically conservative region west of the Cascade Range where people like to hunt and fish and pursue other outdoor activities.

People take part in candle light vigil following a mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon October 1, 2015. A gunman opened fire at a community college in southwest Oregon on Thursday, killing nine people and wounding seven others before police shot him to death, authorities said, in the latest mass killing to rock an American campus. REUTERS/Steve Dipaola

President Obama Says America Made 'Political Choice' To Allow Mass Shootings

Irish Independent reports that President Barack Obama angrily said on Thursday America had made a "political choice" to allow mass shootings like the one in Oregon to occur and blasted the National Rifle Association (NRA) lobby group for blocking reform of U.S. gun laws.

Appearing in the White House briefing room with a grim expression and a frustrated tone, Obama challenged U.S. voters of all political stripes to hold their leaders accountable if they wanted to prevent such tragedies from happening again.

"This is a political choice that we make, to allow this to happen every few months in America," Obama told reporters after the latest shooting at a community college in an Oregon town in which nine people were killed before police fatally shot the gunman.

"We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones because of our inaction," he said.

Obama, a Democrat, visited the town for a campaign stop during his first run for the White House in 2008. There have been more than a dozen mass shootings in America since he took office.

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden made a concerted push for broad gun control reforms after the 2012 Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting of young children that shocked the country, but were unsuccessful.

Obama has blamed the NRA for that failure, which he has called one of the biggest frustrations of his time in office.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike offered thoughts and prayers for the victims and family members of the Oregon massacre on Thursday, but a visibly upset Obama said that was not enough.

"Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine," he said.

"We've become numb to this."

Nodding to the arguments that such shootings are often committed by the mentally ill, Obama said it was clear that anyone who commits such crimes had a "sickness in their minds."

"But we are not the only country on Earth who has people with mental illnesses who want to do harm to other people," he said. "We are the only advanced country on Earth who sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months."

The president referenced shootings in Australia and Britain that led to reforms that largely stopped such massacres there.

CHERISHED FREEDOM

The U.S. Constitution guarantees Americans the right to bear arms, a cherished freedom that has great resonance with many voters. Obama, however, said it did not make sense to argue that the Constitution prevented sensible reforms.

The president proposed more background checks for gun sales after the Newtown massacre and pushed to ban more types of military-style assault weapons, but he failed to convince enough lawmakers to support the restrictions.

Obama exhorted gun owners to question whether the gun lobby represented their views. He did not mention the NRA by name, but his comments were clearly directed at that group, which has broad political influence in Washington.

"Think about whether your views are properly being represented by the organization that suggests it is speaking for you," he said.

A spokesman for the NRA declined comment, saying it was the group's policy "not to comment until all the facts are known."

Obama spoke mainly without notes, anticipating the arguments gun advocates would brandish in the wake of the shooting. He said he knew his opponents would criticize him for politicizing a tragedy.

"This is something we should politicize," he said. "I'd ask the American people to think about how they can get our government to change these laws, and to save lives."

The topic could feature in the 2016 presidential election. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, said on Thursday she would push for reform of gun laws.

However, Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, said Obama's remarks were meant to exploit the tragedy to advance an "anti-gun agenda."

"For this president to make a political pronouncement is at best premature and at worst ignorantly inflammatory," he said in a statement.
Obama said he would continue to press for reform every time such a shooting takes place until he leaves office in 2017. But the White House has made clear that it was unlikely to attempt another broad push on gun control through the Republican-led Congress.