Justin Cook | The Roanoke Times

Eric Thompson speaks Thursday at Virginia Tech. He said he wasn't looking for publicity by speaking.

Virginia Tech police guard Eric Thompson on Thursday before he speaks at Whittemore Hall.

BLACKSBURG -- Saying that his involvement with the April 16 shootings gave him a special responsibility to help people protect themselves, the man who sold one of the guns used by Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho came to the university Thursday to advocate for Students for Concealed Carry on Campus.

Wisconsin gun dealer Eric Thompson made the visit as part of "Firearms Education Week," organized by SCCC at Virginia Tech. Ken Stanton, a Tech graduate student and the chapter's president, said Thompson contacted the group about a month ago about visiting.

Speaking to about 50 people in Tech's Whittemore Hall, Thompson didn't raise his voice or make grand pronouncements. He came back to one theme throughout the 30-minute speech:

"If I want to protect myself, I should have that ability."

Thompson said he supports enforcing existing gun laws and mental health reform to try to prevent further tragedies. He qualified many comments by saying he didn't believe everyone should own a gun and said the two sides in the heated debate over gun control could find common ground.

"We all want to be safe ... and we want our kids to be able to go to the park and play," he said.

Thompson said he paid his own way for Thursday's visit and wasn't looking for publicity, but is responding to attention he received from the media after the shootings.

He said he felt "like I was hit by a truck," when he heard that Cho purchased one of his guns, a Walther .22-caliber handgun, from his company. Another school shooter, Steven Kazmierczak, purchased a gun magazine and a holster from one of Thompson's Web sites. He killed five students and himself at Northern Illinois University in February.

"My heart goes out to the parents and anyone who lost a loved one," Thompson said.

Stanton said he felt it was suitable for Thompson, the president of Web-based firearms company TGSCOM Inc., to come to campus eight days after the one-year anniversary of shootings that left 33 people dead.

"Some people feel it's inappropriate, and I understand that," Stanton said. "But, you know, I think it's a little unreasonable to blame his business when he made a sale legally and it was a sale just like any other sale."

Tech spokesman Larry Hincker released a statement about the visit, acknowledging the importance of free speech but saying that he found Thompson's appearance "terribly offensive."

"The organizers appear to be incredibly insensitive to the families of the victims who lost loved ones and to the injured students still recovering from this horrendous tragedy," he said.

Holly Adams-Sherman, mother of Leslie Sherman, one of the students killed in Norris Hall, said Thompson's appearance at Tech was in poor taste. She heard about it late Wednesday.

"It almost made me want to cry," she said. "And I'm past that."

Stanton, who lost a friend in the April 16 shootings, started the Tech chapter of SCCC a couple of months ago. The national organization was formed shortly after the Tech shootings. He said he was bothered by Hincker's comments and they would just serve to inflame potential conflict around the speech.

Several Tech police officers patrolled the hallways and entrances to the room where Thompson spoke Thursday. The crowd was well behaved, and most in attendance appeared to be supportive of Thompson, although one student wore a T-shirt that read, "guns kill."

Sherman sees Thompson's appearance at Tech as "profiteering" and his advertising his association with the shootings makes it seem like he's bragging about it, she said.

"Is that what he wants to be famous for?" she said.

Thompson did not plug his products Thursday, though a message at the top of his Web site states that he "sold to Virginia Tech and NIU shooters," and will be selling guns at cost for two weeks to "help give law-abiding citizens the 'tools to prevent tragedy.' "

Thompson said he hopes the next news story he's involved in will be about how he sold a gun to someone who stops a shooter from killing.