WashPost:"'Die-In' Counts the Minutes" (pro-gun-control protest)

[K-Romulus]

Interesting intel . . . see photos at article.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/13/AR2007051301274.html

'Die-In' Counts the Minutes
Women Hope Protest Spreads Support for Tighter Gun Rules

By Michelle Betton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 14, 2007; B04

The 32 women dressed in black gathered on a busy street corner in Bethesda yesterday. Orange and maroon ribbons hung around their necks.

At noon, they began lying down one by one on the sidewalk. Supporters handed out fliers explaining their message: a protest against the U.S. gun laws that allowed Virginia Tech student Seung Hui Cho to obtain the weapons he used in the fatal shooting rampage on campus last month. Each of the protesters represented one of his victims.

"We were so outraged by this tragic incident with guns," said Loretta Sevier, Web coordinator at the Potomac School in McLean and an organizer of the event. "We thought we had to do something."

The idea came from Abigail Spangler, 42, a mother of two and a cellist with the Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic. Two days after the April 16 shootings, Spangler decided to organize a women's "lie-in/die-in" that would last only a few minutes, "representing the amount of time it took for the shooter to buy his gun in the United States." That protest was held April 22 in front of Alexandria City Hall.

Jill Lucas, 56, an administrative staff member at the Potomac School, contacted Spangler after reading about her role in the Alexandria demonstration, which led to yesterday's event in Bethesda.

The intent is to heighten the debate over gun control, Lucas said.

"Our message resonates because it's simple," she said. "We should be able to do something to make it a little harder to get a gun in the United States."

The women at Bethesda and Woodmont avenues ranged from Virginia Tech students to grandmothers.

Tina Gehring and her daughter Geneva, a rising senior at Virginia Tech, participated together. "We'd like it to be as difficult to get a gun as to get a driver's license," Tina Gehring said. "I had no idea that you could walk into any private Virginia gun show and buy a gun" without a background check.

Spangler called the lie-ins a "protest in a box," an approach that "allows anyone across America, even a diaper-changing mom like myself, to get online, download letters and hold a protest themselves," she said. "The Alexandria 32 pass the baton to the Bethesda 32. We hope to inspire others to hold this protest as well."

By the end of the event, two participants were talking about holding similar demonstrations in Falls Church and Chestnut Hill, Pa. Ladd Everitt, president of the D.C. chapter of Million Mom March, and Martina Leinz, Virginia state president of Million Mom March, told Spangler that their organization also could help spread the message about holding lie-ins.

 

[gunsmith]

WaPo and Huffpost have thin skins

they won't let me reply, I used to be able to.
I never cursed or made threats.....I simply politely gave my opinion.

 

[Ratzinger_p38]

Tina Gehring and her daughter Geneva, a rising senior at Virginia Tech, participated together. "We'd like it to be as difficult to get a gun as to get a driver's license," Tina Gehring said. "I had no idea that you could walk into any private Virginia gun show and buy a gun" without a background check.

Except Cho didnt do that, you idiot.

 

[SAG0282]

Getting a license is only difficult by virtue of bureaucratic ineptitude (oh how I loathe the DOL).....and anyone who has driven any amount of time, particularly on I5 in Western WA, can attest that the standards have to be pretty low. And these so-called hurdles that these people are so enamored with sure don't seem to have any effect on illegals driving without licenses, the vast amount of drunk driving and other abuses, or accidents....much in the same way that states with CCW training requirements can't boast anything versus their "untrained" counterparts.

So I have this to say since I have to remain on the high road =

 

[Norton]

a cellist with the Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic.

oooohhhh....that's certainly germane to your status as an authority on Constitutional law. Playing cello in a third rate volunteer community orchestra?

By that standard, as a musician that actually gets paid to play, I should be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

 

[Spot77]

We'd like it to be as difficult to get a gun as to get a driver's license," Tina Gehring said

Then your mission is accomplished. It has been for years.

Now go away.

 

[Norton]

We'd like it to be as difficult to get a gun as to get a driver's license," Tina Gehring said

Oh....so you favor giving away guns to illegal aliens at the rate the MD gives drivers licenses away to them?

 

[El Tejon]

Virginia Tech was a Brady-approved gun-free paradise, only madmen and the police have guns at universities. Isn't Virginia Tech something for the 32 to celebrate, not protest?

Cho went through your unlawful prior restraint background checks. He was approved to receive the weapons. Your background check laws are feckless.

Your "no guns on campus" policy made Cho's victims defenseless.

 

[ZeSpectre]

Wish I'd known about this. I'd have protested a "Die-in" across the street based on deaths per minute at the hands of the medical community along with the footnote that this happens EVERY DAY not a single flash in the pan incident.

 

[araiford]

It sickens me to see these people use the deaths of these 32 people to make a political statement. Have they no shame?

 

[scout26]

We'd like it to be as difficult to get a gun as to get a driver's license," Tina Gehring said

In Illinois it's easier to get a drivers licence then it is to get the FOID card needed to purchase or own firearms and/or ammuntion.

 

[yhtomit]

The ideal counter-protest would be a "live in" ...

I'd like to've thrown a "live in" on the other side of the street, ehere an appropriate rate for self-defense (a nice conservative figure -- 2 million seems easily safe) is calculated on a per-minute basis (2 million / 365 / 24 / 60 gets me ... 3.8-something per minute).

The participants in the live-in (who would every 18 seconds or so enter with a confidently raised handgun, pointed in a safe direction, and then stroll over to the non-graveyard area) would not be allowed to act morose or play dead; instead, they'd be stringently required to do normal, enjoyable life activities. They could sit in lawn chairs, eat ice cream, call their grandchildren (or grandparents) on cell phones, enjoy tasty snacks, play videogames or pinochle, draw, read, create artworks, study for exams ... the sort of good, normal things that we like people to be able to do, not specifically or by name, but just because they're what those people want to do! (Unless they have a playing dead, being morose fetish -- background check time )

timothy

 

[RNB65]

The Governor's VA Tech Commission had it's first meeting last Thursday here in Richmond. It quickly evolved in an attack on the Constitution. One woman demanded to know why VA law allows anyone to buy one handgun a month. She said that's way too many. (So much for the second amendment). She further went on to demand to know why NBC was allowed to show the video's that Cho recorded. She said that NBC should have been banned from showing the vids (so much for the First Amendment).

Meeting one of the VT Commission was little more than an attack on the 2A and demands for more gun control.

 

[ZeSpectre]

I'd like to've thrown a "live in" on the other side of the street,

Yeah, that's better than my idea. Start out with a bunch of people "laying in bed" who get up and start their day

 

[tinygnat219]

Does anyone know where / when the next ones will be?

 

[romma]

"We should be able to do something to make it a little harder to get a gun in the United States."

Don't buy one and you won't get one...

 

[CajunBass]

Have they no shame?

Well....No. Actually they don't.

 

[Southern Gobbler]

I think it would be great to show up to one of these protest and stand in the background with a huge banner reading "Result of a Gun Free Zone" or something similar

 

[jpk1md]

Live In

Well, its an organized protest so it should not be hard to find out about the next one.

We could have a LIVE IN and have a bunch of folks show up with banners/signs to celebrate all of the people that have been saved by firearms during attempted break ins/rapes/assaults etc.

 

[LAR-15]

How many WashPo employees took part?

 

[Colt]

Duplicate idea 2 posts up.

 

[Geronimo45]

"We'd like it to be as difficult to get a gun as to get a driver's license," Tina Gehring said

Lawdog said it best.

http://thelawdogfiles.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html

About halfway down the page, this comes up:

Tuesday, April 17, 2007
We license cars ... yackyackyack

I see that the gun grabbers have resurrected the old "We license cars, so why can't we license guns?" meme.

I tell you what -- every time you hear a gun grabber snivel about licensing guns like cars, call him a liar to his face.

I would absolutely love to license guns just like we do cars and drivers -- for the same reason that every gun grabber who suggests it is lying through his or her snaggle teeth.

Think about it.

We give a drivers license to every seventeen-year-old high school student who can pass a lowest-common-denominator Drivers Ed course. A course that can be successfully passed by a lobotomized chimpanzee.

In a large percentage of cases, we give drivers licenses to 16 year-old kids who state that they have a particular hardship.

Tell me, Mr or Ms. Gun Grabber, that you want to license guns just like cars. You'll give a gun license to every 17 year-old who wants one -- just like a drivers license.

There's plenty more where that came from.

 

[alucard0822]

Spangler decided to organize a women's "lie-in/die-in" that would last only a few minutes, "representing the amount of time it took for the shooter to buy his gun in the United States."

she was in MD, they should have had to lay on the sidewalk for 7-10 days, then they couldn't set foot on that sidewalk for a month.

"We'd like it to be as difficult to get a gun as to get a driver's license," Tina Gehring said.

That makes no sense, they don't think cho had a driver's liscence? I have a class c, class m and class b liscence, all took about 2 hours each, I didn't need to have a liscence to buy a car, only money. Felons, crazies, illegals they can get one, and I can rent anything from a compact to a big truck, and drive it anywhere i want, and all 50 states recognize my license as valid.

would be nice to stop by enterprise rent a gat and pick up a mini cooper gun, try it out on the way home,and even to be able to get insurance just in case I hurt myself or someone else I wouldn't have to shell out a dime. sounds like a plan to me. (plus deer and various other tasty critters are ALWAYS in season)

 

[LAR-15]

Do you have to pass a background check to buy a car in the US?

 

[Stickjockey]

Wonder what would have happened had someone wandered through their "die-in" and dropped empty holsters on the "bodies?"