Guns and Va. Tech: Year later, no solutions

updated 10:25 p.m. ET April 11, 2008

NARROWS, Va. - Allen Neely eases his Chrysler Pacifica onto the bridge named in honor of Jarrett Lane, who grew up in this tiny town near the West Virginia border. Jarrett, Neely says quietly, always wanted to build a bridge.

Under the back seat are two pistols. Neely keeps them close these days. He and his construction crew were in Virginia Tech's Norris Hall on April 16 when a mentally ill student went on a rampage — killing Jarrett Lane and 31 others.

Since then, Neely feels safer if his guns are within reach.

Over the past year, people here have questioned the mental health system, which allowed killer Seung-Hui Cho to fall through the cracks. They've questioned the university's security procedures, the media's glorification of violence. Fewer have questioned the state's gun laws.

Tools to be respected
The New River divides the town of Narrows, nestled in the Appalachian Mountains about 30 miles west of Virginia Tech's campus in Blacksburg. This is a typical southwest Virginia town: Many residents leave their doors unlocked, everybody knows everybody's business, and there seem to be as many churches as people.

And this is a community of hunters. Here, guns are tools to be respected; children are taught how to handle them.

Vicki Jones sits at a table with her friends in Anna's Restaurant, the town's gathering spot. Like most everyone in Narrows, she knew Lane, a 22-year-old senior majoring in civil engineering. He was high school valedictorian, athletic, funny, full of promise. More than half the town turned out for his memorial service.

Jones and her friends toss around suggestions for preventing tragedies like the one at Tech: Mental health checks for prospective students. Ridding TV shows of all the violence. They think the idea of allowing students to arm themselves for protection is crazy. But they don't believe gun control is the solution.

Thing is, Jones says as she picks at her salad, there's no simple solution to any of this.

Clamor for legislation dies away
Take a tour of Virginia, a year after the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history. You'll find little has changed — the state remains draped in memorial ribbons, bumper stickers and Tech flags, and the debate over firearms rages on.

Was the easy availability of guns to blame for what happened on that campus? Should the students have been allowed to carry firearms so they could have protected themselves? Did gun laws have anything to do with it at all?

In the weeks and months after the killings, there were protests and counter-protests. Legislation was drafted to tighten oversight of sales at gun shows, then quickly killed by Virginia lawmakers.

So the shows go on. On a recent weekend, an occasional flash of orange or maroon peeks through the crowd at the Richmond Raceway Complex gun show as someone in Virginia Tech attire passes through. The noisy chatter among prospective customers — middle-aged men, mothers with babies, fathers and sons — is occasionally broken by the crackle of a Taser gun demonstration.

There are 88 vendors, hawking everything from modern-day Glocks to 18th-century rifles. Sherry Ramey is one of them. She's also wearing a Virginia Tech sweat shirt. The 37-year-old is a proud alum.

Ramey was uncomfortable around guns until her husband bought her one. Now she's one of the many people in this room who believe students who are legally allowed to carry firearms should be permitted to have them in class.

"If you have a way to stop somebody," she says, "you should use it."

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