Three Dead in Shooting at Bend Safeway

A man wielding an AR-15-style rifle killed two people at a Bend Safeway on Sunday. The shooter, who has not been identified, was found shot dead when police arrived.

The man fired shots into a Big Lots store in Bend’s east side around 7 pm, before storming a neighboring Safeway, killing one person in the entryway and another in the rear of the store, according to an account of the incident given by a spokeswoman for the Bend police at a press conference last night.

The shooting comes as gun violence has soared—nationwide and in Oregon. Two people were shot and killed in Portland over the weekend, one in the Eliot neighborhood near Moda Center and one in the Glenfair neighborhood in East Portland. Thirty-three-year-old Mohamed Osman Adan was also charged with murder of a woman in Powellhurst-Gilbert, although the weapon was not identified. The police listed seven more shootings that occurred over the weekend in a Monday press release.

There have already been nearly 450 mass shootings in the United States in 2022, according to a database maintained by the Gun Violence Archive. Seven, not including the Bend shooting, were recorded on Sunday.

Mass shootings have become more common in recent years, according to an analysis by the Marshall Project, spurring calls for new gun control legislation.

A measure making safety training a prerequisite for buying a gun and banning high-capacity magazines will be on the ballot this November thanks to a successful petition by local advocacy groups.

The issue will also take center stage in the governor’s race. Two of the three candidates addressed the issue in a trio of op-eds in Sunday’s Oregonian.

Democrat Tina Kotek noted that her two opponents have both recently received glowing report cards from the National Rifle Association. Unaffiliated candidate Betsy Johnson promised to “keep guns away from criminals, the crazed and kids.” And Republican Christine Drazan did not mention guns at all.