Spotlight: Oregon college massacre 295th mass shooting in past 274 days in U.S.

The college massacre in Oregon was the 295th mass shooting which happened in the United States in the past 274 days so far in 2015, according to the group Mass Shooting Tracker.

Unlike the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which defines the "mass shooting" as an incident where four or more people are killed in one case, the Tracker broadens the definition of the "mass shooting" to include all incidents involving four or more people being shot but not necessarily killed.

By that criteria, the Tracker reports after collecting data from news reports around the nation that the shooting rampage on Thursday at Umpqua Community College in southern Oregon, which left 9 nine dead, was the 295th mass shooting so far this year.

Hours after deadly Oregon college shooting, another mass shooting incident happened in Florida, leaving three killed and one wounded, said the Tracker.

Nine people were killed and nine more injured Thursday in a campus shooting at Umpqua Community College, state police confirmed.

The gunman, 26-year-old Chris Harper-Mercer, was shot dead after exchange of gunfire with police forces. After initial investigation, authorities said on Friday the Oregon gunman had a cache of 13 weapons, body armor and ammunition.

Hours after the shooting incident, grim-faced U.S. President Barack Obama slammed on Thursday Congress and gun-rights lobby groups for obstructing reforms of gun control laws.

Lamenting that mass shootings had become "routine" in the United States, Obama said just as his televised condolence had become routine, so had reaction from politicians and opponents of stricter gun laws.

"Someone will comment and say, 'Obama politicized this issue,'" said Obama in his 15th statement on mass shootings since taking office. "This is something we should politicize. It is relevant to our common life together, to the body politic."

Also in his speech on Thursday, Obama called on U.S. gun owners "who are using those guns properly, safely" to start questioning whether the gun-rights lobby group represents their views.

Obama did not mention the National Rifle Association by name, but his remarks hit flat on the powerful organization which holds sway in Washington politics.

"We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones because of our inaction," Obama added.

Following the 2012 school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, which claimed 28 lives, including 20 children, the Obama administration initiated but failed to push stronger gun control laws.

The laws, whose sections included expanded background checks and bans on assault weapons, were stymied in Congress after staunch opposition from Republican lawmakers and gun-rights lobby groups.

During his presidency, Obama has been confronted with more than a dozen of high-profile mass shootings, and in an interview earlier this year he called the failure to reform U.S. gun laws "one of the greatest frustrations" of his presidency.

"If you ask me where has been the one area where I feel that I've been most frustrated and most stymied, it is the fact that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on Earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense gun safety laws, even in the face of repeated mass killings," Obama told BBC in July. Endit