Guns and Va. Tech: Year later, no solutions

No background checks
Under state law, private sellers at shows don't have to run background checks of prospective customers. After Virginia Tech, opponents demanded that the law be changed to close what they called the gun show loophole; their opponents argued that Cho didn't buy his guns from a show, and lawmakers ultimately killed the legislation.

Terry Kirkpatrick leans back in his chair and watches customers pore over his antique firearms. The 65-year-old Vietnam veteran has been collecting guns since he was 12, when he found piles of broken Civil War weapons on his farm.

He's of a generation that learned how to hunt young, but that doesn't happen as much these days, he says. Land is being lost to construction, and there are fewer places to hunt. That means fewer people today are familiar with guns — and less understanding leads to more fear.

He doesn't think there's much room in metropolitan areas for guns unless they're locked up. But he doesn't believe in blanket bans on firearms.

"We're always gonna have nuts," he says. "We had it at Virginia Tech, we had it in Colorado."

Nearby, Ken Burton runs his hand along an antique pistol. To him, it is a work of art. He doesn't carry or shoot guns, but he loves the stories behind them — so much so that he moved to the U.S. from his native Australia to sell them. After 35 people were killed by a lone gunman in Tasmania in 1996, Australia instituted strict gun controls — an ineffective measure, Burton says.

"I think this is the best country in the world, and I think it's one of the safest countries in the world," he says. "And I think, well, if people have got guns, it'll stay safe."

Terrible loss on New Year's Eve
The bloodstains in front of Jeanette Richardson's two-story brick home have faded. Her anger has not.

A cold wind is blowing through this middle-class neighborhood in the eastern Virginia city of Newport News. Richardson wipes away tears and stands where her eldest son was shot to death by a stranger with a stolen gun.

It was New Year's Eve, and 18-year-old Patrick, home on Christmas break from art school, was ringing in 2004 with friends at a nearby party. Richardson and her husband were celebrating with neighbors.

She'd heard a lot of popping that night but dismissed the noise as fireworks — until a neighbor came running up to her, screaming.

Richardson found her son splayed out on his back on the street. She fell to her knees and crawled to him, but when she touched his leg, it was already growing cold.

Fury at the system of laws
After Patrick's death, she was outraged — furious at a system of laws she felt had done nothing to keep guns out of the wrong hands.

Slide show   Virginia Tech See images from the deadliest shooting in U.S. history.

Richardson didn't feel rage like that again until April 16, 2007, when she stood in an Illinois hotel room watching the breaking news of the Virginia Tech shootings on TV. She sank to the couch and wept. And she later told her friends, "Nothing's going to change. It's Virginia."

She'd already spent the two years since Patrick's death lobbying for stronger gun control. Within weeks of his murder, she had contacted the Brady Campaign and the Million Mom March, which was pushing to renew a ban on assault weapons. She founded a local chapter of Parents of Murdered Children. She attended rallies and protests, marched and shouted and demanded change.

After Virginia Tech, she spoke at a protest held outside the Capitol in Richmond in support of closing the gun show loophole.

She knows there's a great chasm in Virginia and in the nation over guns. It's torn apart her own family. She hasn't spoken to her aunt, a gun owner who vehemently disagrees with her views, in more than three years.

"It's like civil war," she says, clutching a damp tissue. "It's a divider."

On the mantle over her fireplace is a self-portrait Patrick painted just hours before he died. Upstairs, one of her surviving sons is playing a computer game and cheering loudly.

If need be, she says, he'll push her wheelchair to protests when she's too old to walk.

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