Democratic lawmakers are renewing calls for stricter gun control after a 16-year-old attacker broke into an Oregon elementary school and fatally shot three children and a teacher before an armed bystander killed him, authorities said. The shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend has revived a familiar political fight over firearms regulation, with several high-profile Democrats saying the deaths should force Congress to act.
Sen. Ron Wyden, who has represented Oregon in the Senate since 1996, made one of the most explicit appeals for tighter gun laws. «The best way to honor these victims is to at long last pass common-sense gun laws that reduce the risks of more children, parents, teachers and staff forced to live in fear of similar nightmares for their schools,» Wyden said in a statement. The attacker used his mother's shotgun, according to the Associated Press.
Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., said the pattern of school shootings must end. «The epidemic of gun violence in schools across America must come to an end,» she said Thursday night. «No parent should have to wonder if their child will come home at the end of the day. Children deserve to feel safe — and be safe — in school.»
Rep. Janelle Bynum, whose district includes Bend, attended a nighttime vigil for the teacher and the children — aged 5, 8 and 11 — who were killed. She pressed for action in an interview with KTVZ 21, a local NBC station in Bend. «When are we going to step up and say enough of killing our babies? When are we going to say that we need safe schools, that we need to make sure that people who should not have firearms don't have them? When are we going to stop making excuses? When are we going to practice that same bravery that that bystander had?» Bynum said.
Statements from Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Oregon's Democratic governor, Tina Kotek, stopped short of calling for new gun regulations, but both made clear that gun violence should have no place in American schools. Democrats outside Oregon appeared more willing to endorse further restrictions in the immediate aftermath of the attack, which also left a 7-year-old child and a 54-year-old teacher critically injured.
Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., said the gun reforms Congress passed after the Uvalde school shooting — including enhanced background checks for buyers under 21 — did not go far enough. «Much more must be done. Not a single child should be lost to gun violence. Ever,» Heinrich said in a statement posted to social media. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who supports federal red-flag laws and universal background checks, struck a similar note. «No family should ever have to suffer like this—and there have been over 50 school shootings just this year,» she wrote on social media. «Congress must do much more to prevent gun violence.»
The political reaction unfolded as authorities in Bend continued to piece together how the attack happened and how the teenage gunman obtained the weapon. Police said they did not know whether the shooter knew anyone at the school or had attended it when he was younger. Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz said the first emergency call came at 12:59 p.m. from a person in a vehicle who reported being shot at multiple times by someone carrying a long gun. Dispatchers then received dozens of calls reporting that a shooter had entered the school. Officers arrived within three minutes of the first call, and moments later an officer reported that a «community member» had shot the teenage suspect.
Silver Rail Elementary School, about 125 miles southeast of Portland, has 467 students this academic year and serves kindergarten through fifth grade. After the shooting, students were bused to a nearby church that served as a family reunification center, where relieved parents embraced their children and walked them to their cars, some carrying stuffed animals and other comfort items they had brought from home, the Associated Press reported. The Bend-La Pine school district canceled classes, sporting events and extracurricular activities Friday across all 32 of its schools.