US PRESIDENT Barack Obama renewed calls for tighter gun control laws on Thursday after a gunman killed at least nine people at an Oregon college.

Armed with three handguns and an assault rifle, the man informally identified as Chris Harper Mercer went on a murderous rampage at the Umpqua Community College on Thursday morning before being shot dead by police.

One witness said he had demanded to know students’ religion, shooting those who answered that they were Christian.

However, police in the town of Roseburg would not comment on the killer’s motives.

It was the third deadly mass shooting this year, defined in US police terms of four or more people killed.

But the website Mass Shooting Tracker, which includes incidents in which multiple victims are wounded, called it the 294th.

Some tried to use the massacre to call for armed guards at places of learning.

“I suspect this is going to start a discussion across the country about how community colleges prepare themselves for events like this,” said former college president Joe Olson.

The Democratic Party-controlled Pacific coast state of Oregon already has relatively strict gun control laws in comparison to other US states.

In a televised address following the shooting, Mr Obama called for new national legislation on gun ownership.

“This is a political choice that we make, to allow this to happen every few months in America,” he said.

“We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones because of our inaction.

“We are not the only country on earth that has people with mental illnesses or want to do harm to other people,” he said, but added: “We are the only advanced country on Earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months.”

The president lamented how such events had become “routine” and cited the terrifying statistic that “there is a gun for roughly every man, woman and child in America.”

He drew a parallel with legislation on road safety and workplace accidents, arguing that: “The notion that gun violence is somehow different, that our freedom and our constitution prohibits any modest regulation of how we use a deadly weapon, doesn’t make sense.”