Oregon city split over Obama visit

Slayings fuel debate on guns

ROSEBURG, Ore. -- When President Barack Obama arrives today, he will find a small timber city still in mourning over the shooting that killed eight community college students and a teacher but also angry over his calls for new gun restrictions.

In the week after a gunman opened fire on classmates, many people in the region known as Oregon's Bible Belt were quick to reaffirm their opposition to stricter gun laws. At least one parent of a shooting survivor said his family will not meet with the president, although his daughter said she hopes to. Gun-rights supporters plan to protest during Obama's visit.

"He's not wanted here. He's coming here purely to push his garbage, and we don't want it," said Michelle Finn, who is helping organize the protests planned for intersections near the small airport where Obama's helicopter is expected to touch down.

Douglas County is bristling with gun owners who said they use their weapons for hunting, target shooting and protecting themselves. A commonly held opinion in the area is that the solution to mass killings is more people carrying guns, not fewer.

A single unarmed security guard was on patrol the day of the shooting. For months before the attack, faculty and staff members had debated whether to arm campus security officers.

"The fact that the college didn't permit guards to carry guns, there was no one there to stop this man," said Craig Schlesinger, pastor at the Garden Valley Church.

Schlesinger is among the clergymen who have been comforting the families of those slain last Thursday by Christopher Harper-Mercer.

Nine other people were wounded, some seriously.

Sheriff John Hanlin has become a symbol of the region's rejection of tighter gun control. After 20 children and six adults were killed in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Hanlin sent Vice President Joe Biden a letter saying he would never comply with any gun-control law from the Obama administration.

Hanlin, a visible figure at news conferences after the Roseburg killings, has said that now is not the time for a debate about gun control.

Immediately after the shooting, Obama said he intended to politicize the Roseburg attack to put pressure on Congress to adopt gun restrictions -- a statement that angered much of Roseburg, a city of 22,000 people about 180 miles south of Portland.

Some families are divided, even those directly affected by the rampage.

Stacy Boylan, father of shooting survivor Ana Boylan, told Fox News that his family would not attend an event with the president because of Obama's views on guns.

But Ana Boylan said she would meet Obama if she has a chance to do so in private.

Her mother, Deanna Boylan, said her daughter wants to ask the questions in private, not in the media spotlight.

Trying to tamp down suggestions that Obama would receive a cold reception, Douglas County commissioners released a statement Thursday welcoming him.

"Regardless of our differences with the president on policy issues, we await the president's arrival and look forward to his show of support" for a grieving community that is enduring "immeasurable" heartache, said Susan Morgan, chairman of the commission.

Roseburg leaders also sought to reassure Obama that he is welcome, saying in a statement earlier in the week that they would "extend him every courtesy."

The president has never been popular in the Roseburg area. Barely a third of the county voted for him in the last election.

He will not be the first national leader to confront resistance to gun control in Roseburg.

In 1968, while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, Robert F. Kennedy told a hostile crowd that it was too easy for people who should not own a gun to buy one.

"Does that make any sense that you should put rifles and guns in the hands of people who have long criminal records, of people who are insane, or of people who are mentally incompetent or people who are so young they don't know how to handle rifles or guns?" Kennedy said.

He lost the Oregon primary the next day and was fatally shot in Los Angeles less than two weeks later.

Information for this article was contributed by Gosia Wozniacka of The Associated Press.

A Section on 10/09/2015

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