Posted on 02/01/2008 8:30:56 AM PST by kiriath_jearim
Protesters at the South Carolina Statehouse calling for tougher gun laws Wednesday attracted counter-protesters who are against more restrictions on gun rights.
The first group was part of ProtestEasyGuns.com, a grassroots effort that was formed after the Virginia Tech shootings, during which 32 people were killed. The protesters wore ribbons in the Virginia Tech school colors.
The demonstration was organized by Joanne Hafter of Irmo, whose daughter, Lizzy, was shot and killed in 2006 by a man who had stolen a gun. The owner of that gun had not reported it stolen. Hafter wants state lawmakers to pass a law requiring gun owners to notify police if a gun is lost or stolen.
"We're asking gun owners to act like adults," she told reporters. "We're asking them to act responsibly. We're asking this South Carolina government to act like adults and to enact laws to make all gun owners to act responsibly."
The group says it's not against people lawfully owning guns, but it is against lax gun laws.
The counter-protesters are members of GrassRoots GunRights. They wore t-shirts that read, "Guns Save Lives" across the back and carried signs that said things like "My gun makes you safer" and "Murderers prefer unarmed victims".
Bill Rentiers, executive officer of the group, said, "What happens when you ban guns from a school or a church or a college campus is you, the thugs, the madmen, they're crazy but they're not stupid. They know where they can go to get the biggest body count and no one can fire back."
He says the answer to shooting rampages like the one at Virginia Tech is not fewer guns, but more, since the campus was already a "gun-free" zone. Had there been someone on campus with a concealed weapon, the gunman might have been stopped, just as an armed security guard stopped a gunman at a Colorado church recently.
The anti-gun protesters laid down in the grass in front of the Statehouse in remembrance of the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings. The protesters stayed on the ground in silence for three minutes, the amount of time they say it takes to buy a gun in the United States.
The last sentence should have read that GrassRoots Gun Rights stood by standing and laughing for enternity becaue they spent three minutes to protect themselves and weren’t lying on the ground dead.
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