How Mass Shooters in The USA Get Their Guns

[99th_Monkey]

Here are the origins of every gun used in the high-profile massacres of Obama’s presidency.
By Christina Cauterucci and Greta Weber * Oct. 2, 2015 * Slate

On Thursday, after Chris Harper Mercer shot and killed 9 people at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, President Obama gave the latest in a tragic series of addresses in response to mass shootings in the U.S. "It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm to get his or her hands on a gun," he said.

But it is remarkably easy to get your hands on a gun in this country. Of the 11 shootings that prompted Obama to give a public address, eight were committed by gunmen who’d bought at least some of their firearms legally, some just days before their massacres. Several had histories of criminal behavior and mental illness that fell just shy of prohibiting their gun purchases—and in one case, a bureaucratic slip-up in the routine FBI background check was at fault. Here’s how the guns in each attack came into the hands of the killers.

Shooting: Military base at Fort Hood, Texas
Date: Nov. 5, 2009
Perpetrator: Nidal Hasan
Guns: FN Five-seven semiautomatic pistol and Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver. He killed 13 people and injured more than 30.
How he got them: Guns Galore, a gun shop in Killeen, Texas, sold Hasan the gun legally three months before the shooting. He was not required to register the firearm on the base, because he didn’t reside there.

For more examples here of how mass shooters got their guns:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/10/how_roseburg_newtown_and_other_mass_shooters_got_their_guns.html

[riversedge]

1. ..