Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Oregon School Shooter Had Interests Like the Las Vegas Shooters

Granted, not all of the shooters who go on rampages killing innocent people are wrapped up in war right and gun obsessed ideologies.  But, that said, there seem to be some striking similarities between the killers who murdered two policemen and a bystander in Las Vegas and the student who went on a shooting spree in an Oregon high school.  In both cases the guns used were legally secured - which seems to always be the case - and the shooters seemingly clung to extreme ideologies that included an obsession with guns.  What I find very frightening is the fact that Padgett, like the shooters in Kas Vegas outwardly looked "normal." The Daily Mail reports on the Oregon shooter:

Jared Michael Padgett, 15, the gunman who killed a Reynolds High School student in Portland, Oregon was a gun-obsessive who became furious with his classmates over his presentation about Hitler one week before his shooting spree.

This comes as Troutdale Police Chief Scott Anderson revealed that Padgett was armed with a legally owned AR-15 rifle, which he stole from his home and used to open fire and kill Emilio Hoffman, 14 and wound PE teacher Todd Rispler.

Police also revealed that Padgett arrived for his shooting spree on the school bus and was heavily armed, with nine loaded magazines, holding several hundred rounds carried in a guitar case - raising the possibility that he planned on committing mass murder.

Padgett, who took his own life in a locker toilet after killing Hoffman, was also carrying a handgun which he did not fire and a knife.

Freshman Kaylah Ensign, who knew Padgett since middle school, described a gun-obsessive who lost his temper last week when giving a presentation about a book on Adolf Hitler.

She told OregonLive that she did not recall the name of the book, but when they discussed the Holocaust he said, 'this is life now' and 'everything really does happen for a reason.'

Indeed, Ensign said he became extremely agitated during his presentation about the book on the Nazi leader when members of his class began to disagree with him.
'He got really uptight over it and started raising his voice,' she said, adding that 'he felt as if they were facts.'

On Padgett's Facebook page, the 15-year-old liked two tactical knife companies, M4 assault rifles and political pages such as 'Conservative American Military Veterans Against Barack Obama' and 'We WILL NOT Be Disarmed.'

These strong pro-gun opinions may have been inherited from his family. His brother-in-law Andrew Cooper wrote on Facebook that school shootings could be prevented with more armed guards.
More wasted lives and a school shooting now happens at least once a week in America yet we still have no meaningful gun control laws that would make it more difficult for the emotionally disturbed individuals to get their hands on guns.

 

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