Two days before carrying out the deadliest mass shooting in modern Oregon history, Christopher Harper-Mercer walked into a Roseburg pawnshop, selected a .380-caliber handgun from a glass case, cleared the background checks, paid $163 and walked out with his new purchase.
Despite Harper-Mercer’s long history of struggles with serious, sometimes debilitating, mental health problems, nothing in state and federal law prohibited the troubled man from buying a gun.
But a new state law will make it easier for family members and police to take guns away from people at risk of hurting themselves or others.
On Oct. 1, 2015, Harper-Mercer, 26, opened fire inside a Snyder Hall classroom at Umpqua Community College, killing nine people and wounding eight others before exchanging gunfire with police and then killing himself.
Last week, the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office released its investigation of the massacre, saying all guns they seized had been bought legally.
Oregon and federal law prohibits people from buying firearms if they’ve been involuntarily committed by a court, found guilty except for insanity or determined unable to aid in their own defense. Oregon State Police, who conduct background checks for gun purchases, estimates that 34,330 people are disqualified for these reasons as of Sept. 1.
State police approve, delay or deny gun purchases after a check of statewide and federal databases to look for any of the mental health exceptions, but also to look for outstanding warrants, felony convictions and other reasons that would ban a purchase.
Under federal law, commitment to a mental institution for observation or a voluntary admission to a mental institution doesn’t prohibit a person from buying a gun. And under state law, the prohibition applies only to people who are formally committed to a mental institution by the Oregon Health Authority, the state’s health department.
None of those applied to Harper-Mercer, whose mother told police that her son had been hospitalized, apparently voluntarily, on more than one occasion for mental health reasons.
But starting next year, law enforcement officials or family members can petition a judge for an “extreme risk protection order” that temporarily forbids a person from possessing or buying deadly weapons if the person is deemed an imminent threat to themselves or others.
Oregon lawmakers passed the bill this year to reduce the state’s rising suicide rate and to try to head off mass shootings.
In Oregon, firearms were used in 53 percent of suicides in 2016, according to the Oregon Health Authority.
The law would require people to surrender their guns if a judge determines they pose a safety risk. They would have to turn over their guns within 24 hours to a law enforcement officer, gun dealer or third party once the order is issued.
Washington and California have similar laws. Connecticut and Indiana have laws that allow law enforcement officers, not family, to petition courts to intervene.
Senate Majority Leader Ginny Burdick, a sponsor of the legislation, said whether the new law could have been used to keep Harper-Mercer away from guns “would depend on what went on inside that home.”
She said the law isn’t tied to a person’s mental health diagnosis but instead to “behavior, threats and history.”
“It allows a family member or law enforcement to petition a judge for very rapid response where something is going to happen immediately or people have a reason to believe it will happen immediately,” Burdick said.
In Harper-Mercer’s case, his mother, Laurel Harper, told police he’d long been prone to anger and mood swings, he’d seen multiple psychiatrists and taken medications at some point, though not as an adult.
About six years earlier, he pointed a shotgun at her, but she was “just too weak” to call for help, according to a transcript of the police interview of Harper.
“So you called the cops?” asked Oregon State Police Detective Kyle Wilson.
“I probably should’ve,” said Harper, “but I didn’t.”
