I'm sorry but you seem to have mistaken me for a yankee. I do not believe that I have a right to go to NY or CA and protest their laws. I may not like their laws, but I reckon they have a right to pass them.
It is Virginians that have a right to peaceably assemble and to petition Virginia government for a redress of grievances. And Californians that have a right to do so in CA, and New Yorkers that have a right to do so in NY. The point of it all is that the people of each State have a right to control their own legislature. I think you are WRONG to turn such fundamental principles against themselves by construing them to mean that foreigners have the same right to peaceably assemble and to petition the Virginia government as Virginians do.
Hey sometimes that's how it works but the grief that is causing these folks to flail around and hurt others in their quest to "do something" should not be given legitimate status as a reason for making policy just because we sympathize with their grief.
At one point, Jeff Knox, director of operations of the Manassas-based Firearms Coalition, approached survivor Colin Goddard and said students could have stopped student Seung-Hui Cho's rampage if they had been allowed to carry guns on campus.
I happen to like Iowa's system whereby I go to the Sherrif's department once a year, pay $8, they run me through NICS and I get a peice of plastic saying that I am "legal" to purchase pistols and revolvers. It also saves me the time of having to get called into NICS on purchases of long guns. The only "waiting period" is waiting for the card to come in the mail.