Locals are torn on gun laws after Oregon college shooting

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- The shooting in Oregon has rekindled the debate over gun control.

We asked students at Fresno City College if they thought stricter gun laws would prevent these mass shootings.

Tarra Molineux said, "Yeah, if they banned guns it probably would stop it from happening, but that's not how it works in this country."

Joy Hobbs had this response, "I really feel people kill people, guns don't kill people."

A national surveys conducted this summer show Americans divided on the issue.

About 88 percent favor background checks on all gun buyers. Another 70 percent of Americans think the government should track all gun sales, but 60 percent don't believe stricter gun laws would actually reduce deaths.

Sam Sarkissian is a former minister in Fresno who now lives in Roseburg, Oregon, just two hundred feet from the building where the shooting took place. He says folks in Roseburg are among those who don't feel gun control works.

"No one is looking at this and saying it's a gun problem, they are looking at this and saying it's a crazy person problem."

Sarkissian estimates 20 to 30 per cent of the population in Roseburg carries guns.

"There's people in the grocery stores and the movie theatres at the schools picking up their kids they are concealed carriers, the women have them under their shirts, in their purses."

Still he says the community is shocked by what happened.

"Sorrow and a spirit of fear. I think a spirit of fear has descended on everybody."

A Fresno City College student who isn't sure about gun control, told us the rash of school shootings has him wondering who's on his campus.

" Honestly we need more security because we don't know any of these people they could be out of their mind one day and not the same person they were yesterday."