The Rocky Mountain Collegian

Issue date: 4/18/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Katie Stevens Toni Zimmerman, front, CSU faculty and Virginia Tech alumni, takes part in the national "lie-in" to raise awareness about easily accessible firearms and rememberance of the Virginia Tech massacre. The action took place on the plaza, in front of Morgan Library Wednesday, April 16, 2008. More information about the national movement to change America's gun laws can be found at http://protesteasyguns.com/.

They came not to stand for their cause, but to lie. One by one, 32 men, women and children took their places on the cold concrete in front of the Morgan Library, each to the toll of a bell. There they lay for three minutes, the time they say it took the young man at Virginia Tech to purchase the guns he used to kill 32 fellow students a year ago.



"We're here to pause and remember and pay tribute to the victims and their families," said event organizer Toni Zimmerman, a human development and family studies professor and a Virginia Tech alumnus.



Organized by "Protest Easy Guns," the event was one of 80 such protests in communities across the country on the one-year anniversary of the shootings at V-tech.



"Protest Easy Guns" was started by 32 women in Alexandria, Virginia, who organized a civil protest following the shootings. According to their Web site, "It is too easy to purchase guns in America."



But other students disagreed with the protestors.



"That's actually false," said CSU alumnus Tim Bessler, of the group's premise that the shooter obtained the guns in three minutes.



"He had to wait 30 days to buy both hand guns," Bessler said.



Bessler held a small sign advocating protesteasygunslies.com. He said he came to the event "to provide an alternative point of view."



Since the shootings at V-tech, Bessler said, the Governor of Virginia has "made it so that mental health rulings are submitted to databases," thus closing the loophole that allowed the shooter, who had been treated for mental illness, to purchase guns.

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