Three days after Seung-Hui Cho fired more than 170 rounds during his Virginia Tech killing spree, Abby Spangler fired off e-mail messages to her friends.

That Sunday, a group gathered outside city hall in Alexandria, Va. Thirty-two people lay on the ground, simulating the deaths of 32 Virginia Tech victims, for three minutes. That was the amount of time, they said, it took Cho to buy a gun.

A movement was born. So far, Spangler's protests have been staged in 12 states and the District of Columbia and cities including Raleigh, Durham and Charlotte in this state. The 32nd protest, called UNC-32, is scheduled for noon today in front of Wilson Library at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Spangler, a Charlotte native and daughter of billionaire businessman and former UNC President C.D. Spangler, said her initial act sprang from a desperate desire to do something for the Virginia Tech families.

"I was just grief-stricken and heartbroken for them," she said. "I thought, 'They're not in any position to do anything about this because of their great loss.' And I thought, 'Well, I'm going to do it for them.' "

Spangler, a 42-year-old mother of two young children and a cellist in the Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic, knew little about gun laws. Six months later, she rattles off gun violence statistics like a seasoned lobbyist.

Between her musical career and her children's soccer games and piano lessons, she coordinates Protest Easy Guns using her iPhone. Her Web site, www.ProtestEasyGuns.com, helps people plan and carry out a straightforward yet dramatic statement, a demonstration Spangler calls the "lie-in."

In Times Square, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg showed up. In Detroit, Jesse Jackson made an appearance. In Charlotte, her parents and sister joined.

The protests are often videotaped and posted on YouTube. A Facebook group seeks support from young people.

Spangler does not raise money for the cause, and she does not see the endeavor as a radical political statement. She does not favor banning guns altogether but does want to see what she termed common-sense steps to reduce the availability of guns to criminals and dangerous individuals.

She wants better background checks on gun buyers; required background checks by sellers at gun shows; and a reinstatement of the federal assault weapons ban.

"We're against people-hunters," she said.

Divisive issue

Spangler knows her message won't resonate with some people. Gun control is a divisive issue, and last week, a group called Students for Concealed Carry on Campus launched its own protest, encouraging college students to wear empty holsters to class. The group's Web site points out that Cho simply disregarded Virginia Tech's rule of being a gun-free zone. It's unclear how many holster protests took place on campuses, and the group did not respond to an e-mail request for an interview.

Spangler's Web site lists a step-by-step process for staging a "lie-in." There is a sample letter to invite protesters, a sample news release, a set of talking points, a list of Virginia Tech victims, a handout titled "How to Contact Your Elected Officials." It has detailed directions for making the orange and maroon Virginia Tech remembrance ribbons that protesters wear around their necks.

The ribbons and "Protest Easy Guns" banners are typically mailed from group to group.

"I call it protest in a box to make it super-simple, even for a diaper-changing mom like me," Spangler said.

Connie Padgett, a UNC-CH employee and member of the Million Mom March, a gun violence prevention group, arranged the 32-protest planned for today on campus. It won't be a "lie-in," she said. Instead, the 32 participants will freeze in place for three minutes.

"The concept of, 'I can do this by myself, I can ask 32 people,' we can stand silently for three minutes, I can say a few words ... the simplicity of it is attractive," she said.

Va. Tech support

Spangler's efforts have won support from some of the Virginia Tech families. Andy Goddard, an engineer from Richmond, Va., has been at three of the protests. His son, Colin, was shot four times in French class during Cho's Norris Hall attack. Colin survived and returned to the campus to continue his education, but he still has three bullets lodged in his body, his father said.

Andy Goddard stood with protesters this month at the University of Virginia and outside a gun show in Richmond.

"They are exquisitely simple," he said of the demonstrations. "It's very simple, yet it's very compelling."

Though Spangler had no experience with the gun control debate, she was academically prepared for starting a movement. The valedictorian of West Charlotte High School, she graduated from Wellesley College. At Columbia University, she wrote a 500-page doctoral dissertation on the politics of disease, focusing on social movements about AIDS and cancer.

Now, her friends jokingly call her dining room "the war room." She testified before the review panel that investigated the Virginia Tech shooting.

"I hope we can mobilize more and more people so it becomes a drumbeat," she said. "It's the same protest. We repeat it again and again and again."