Virginia Tech said yesterday that it will not allow a national gun-control advocacy group to hold a campus demonstration on April 16 while the school commemorates last year's massacre.Oh good, a "die in". Those are always so effective.
Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said neither the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence nor the co-sponsor of the planned demonstration, ProtestEasyGuns.com, had applied for an assembly permit, and even if they had, Tech only issues permits to student groups.
Tech's position threw the Brady Campaign's plans into disarray yesterday: The noon demonstration at Tech was supposed to be the centerpiece of a nationwide series of events on April 16 in more than 70 cities and towns.
"I think we'll have to figure out what's going on," said Brady Campaign spokesman Doug Pennington. He added that students and friends of last year's shooting victims are among those who want to participate in the demonstration, "so, I'm sure where there's a will, there's a way without breaking any rules."
The planned demonstration at Tech called for individuals to lie down on the Drillfield in groups of 32 -- to recall the 32 victims of gunman Seung-Hui Cho -- for a few minutes. The brevity of the "lie-in" is meant to highlight how quickly a gun can be purchased in the United States. The Brady Campaign is calling on Congress to mandate background checks of buyers at gun shows.
The Brady Campaign is doing itself a significant disservice by trying to impose their political views on a memorial event. Besides just being tacky and classless, it also serves as a reminder that the policies the Brady Campaign advocates helped make this situation worse than it had to be. Had there been guns in the hands of somebody besides the crazed shooter, this situation might have ended far earlier and with a significantly lower death toll.
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