UT Austin Students Protest Open Carry Law With Dildos and Backpacks
To protest a law allowing students to carry a concealed weapon on campus, University of Texas, Austin student Jessica Jin is starting her own concealed carry campaign… just not with guns, exactly. In an event she’s shared on Facebook, she asks the student body to strap “gigantic swinging dildos to our backpacks in protest of campus carry.”
I can see your confusion now, so let me explain. Jin is doing this to highlight an inconsistency in the law. On August 1st, 2016, the concealed carry law mentioned above takes effect, allowing any properly licensed member of the student body to carry a concealed weapon anywhere on campus. However, there’s also a longstanding university bylaw that prohibits students from “distribut[ing] or display[ing] on the campus any writing or visual image, or engage in any public performance, that is obscene.”
To sum it up: guns are a-okay. Obscenity: no way!
Doesn’t that seem a little inconsistent? It’s wild that the campus is allowed to police students’ writing, art, and even behavior if it can be remotely construed as obscene. But guns? Yeah, totally fine, nothing to worry about there! Guns aren’t harmful, but obscene behavior is. Let’s stop obscene behavior cause we totally can’t do anything about guns at all.
Look: we live in a country where we’ve had 52 school shootings this year alone. That’s enough to average out to one shooting every week in a year. According to RT, 30 students were killed and 53 were injured in those shootings. This isn’t even counting the number of shooting sprees that were foiled by authorities before they even began. How many more is it going to take before we decide that we have a very serious problem with guns in our country?
Do me a favor. Take a moment to check out Jin’s Facebook event one more time. This time, take a look at the comments. How many gross misogynistic comments can you count? How many angry trolls do you think are lurking under the folds? Now here’s a chilling thought: these are the people with the guns.
(via Jezebel)
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