CORRECTION

A story Tuesday in the City & State section about a gun protest at UNC-CH misstated Virginia's reporting policy as it pertains to mental health and guns. After the Virginia Tech shootings, Virginia's governor issued an executive order that data regarding the mentally ill who are judged to be a danger to themselves and others be entered into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

******

CHAPEL HILL -- With Hokie-colored maroon and orange ribbons looped around their necks, 32 adults dressed in black stood quietly on the lawn at Polk Place as the UNC-Chapel Hill bell tower chimed 12 times Monday afternoon.

"It took the killer at Virginia Tech three minutes to buy his gun," Connie Padgett said, referring to the tragedy in April that took 32 lives at Virginia Tech University.

For the next three minutes, Padgett led a silent protest. Sunlight spilling over the Wilson Library dome bathed the solemn faces as students hurried by toward the Pit, already noisy with a lunchtime crowd.

This brief protest against the ease with which the killer at Virginia Tech bought a gun was the 32nd such protest against easy gun access.

Padgett organized the protest after participating in similar ones in Durham and Raleigh as a member of the Triangle Chapter of the Million Mom March.

North Carolinians Against Gun Violence co-sponsored the event.

The first protest was organized by Abby Spangler, a Charlotte native and the daughter of billionaire businessman and former UNC system President C.D. Spangler. She lives in Virginia.

Padgett said she and Spangler invited people to participate at Monday's protest, and Spangler had asked her to draw attention to the fact that it was the 32nd event.

Lisa Price, executive director of North Carolinians Against Gun Violence, said that, as in Virginia, North Carolina does not enter data into the national database that gun dealers can check when someone is adjudicated as mentally ill and a danger to himself and society.

"We can change this law in North Carolina," Price said.

Padgett talked about this being homecoming week on campus and mentioned three UNC-CH-affiliated people who would not be able to be there because of gun violence:

* Travis Cooper, a UNC-CH student who had worked with her at the Carolina Population Center and was killed by gunfire in 1997 in Lumberton;

* Shennel McKendall, who was fatally shot in 2004 while walking in to work at a UNC Hospitals building near the Friday Center; and

* Jamie Bishop, a German instructor who applied computer technologies to language instruction while at UNC-CH, who was killed in the Virginia Tech shootings.

She chose not to mention the 1995 rampage of former UNC-CH law student Wendell Williamson, which left two people dead and a law enforcement officer seriously injured near campus.

Vicky Wells, who works with UNC Press, said she thought of her own children, the ages of college students and slightly older, as she participated in the event.

"It's not that we're anti-gun," she said. "We just don't want someone with proven mental instability to get guns."

(Staff writer Jane Stancill contributed to this report.)