An Austin woman has come up with a rather innovative way to protest a new “campus carry” law that will allow Texans to carry concealed weapons on campuses: what if gun control advocates were to show up on the University of Texas at Austin carrying not guns, but … dildos?
Naturally, she’s calling it #CocksNotGlocks.
As Jessica Jin, the woman behind the proposed protest, explained on the Facebook page she set up for the event,
“You’re carrying a gun to class? Yeah well I’m carrying a HUGE DILDO.'”
Just about as effective at protecting us from sociopathic shooters, but much safer for recreational play.
She’s got a point: As the Washington Post has noted, for every “justified homicide” carried out with a gun — that is, for every time someone kills someone with a gun in an act of legitimate self-defense — there are 34 gun homicides, 78 gun suicides, and 2 people killed accidentally with guns.
Predictably, gun enthusiasts have responded to Jin’s protest — which isn’t even scheduled until the law takes effect next August — with the sort of behavior that suggests once again that they are the absolute last people in the world who should ever be entrusted with guns.
And that includes this guy:
The gun enthusiasts have been flooding Jin and her Facebook page with threats, angry rants, and an assortment of obscene pictures. Some of their, er, wisdom:
You can find more along these lines in Raw Storys post on the protest.
This guy, meanwhile, has been posting offensive pic after offensive pic. A few of the more palatable:
The threats have been worrying enough to Jin that she’s contacted the local police.
Just as worryingly, one self-described “Anarchist, Atheist, Asshole” by the name of Christopher Cantwell has decided to doxx her, posting her address and phone number on his blog and informing his readers that “I can confirm the number is working. I called her, and she called me back and left a voicemail with her name.”
Because why not give angry gun owners what amounts to a map to her home?
If Cantwell’s name sounds familiar, that’s because we’ve met him before: I wrote about last year when I discovered him on Twitter telling numerous people to go kill themselves in assorted inventive ways.
Oh, and did I mention he wrote not one, not two, but nine articles for A Voice for Men last year? And that AVFM’s Paul Elam and Dean Esmay responded to my post about his Twitter “activism” … by telling me to kill myself? Ah, memories!
Happily, gun control supporters have rallied around Jin and her protest, posting supportive comments and repurposed gun fetishist propaganda with dildos taking the place of guns.
So far, more than 4000 people on Facebook say they will be attending the protest, and there’s talk about getting a sex toy company to sponsor the event.
H/T — Thanks to Jennifer Graham and Snork Maiden for pointing me to this story.
Magic
http://media.giphy.com/media/MJen7wJuWUWYM/giphy.gif
I was hoping someone would make a Saints’ Row reference. I’m so glad you two didn’t disappoint.
Bless your faces.
@ ikeke
I don’t know who the Midnighter is but I like that advice; especially the last bit.
@Magic
That’s an… awfully bitter sounding response. Why is the idea of someone feeling unsafe in (presumably) your country unappealing to you? Do you like the idea that America seems scary and dangerous to the outside observer?
How did rape even come into this? Is there some significant amount of people out there not being raped because they’re carrying guns? Because the last time I looked into it, there wasn’t. In fact, it’s pretty fucking difficult (if not impossible) to prove. And it just feeds into that same sick “you’re responsible for preventing your own rape” bullshit that absolves rapists and blames victims that I am so fucking tired of hearing.
Britter Sweet,
Interesting how most of the states with the lower rates of gun homicide are blue or purple while most of the states with the higher rates of gun homicide are red. For all the (racist) caterwauling the right does about how horrible Chicago and Detroit are, when you look at violence per capita like this, they don’t drag their states into the top ten.
Although, looking at the states that are in the top ten in gun homicides, it seems like poverty could be the causation just as easily as the gun laws.
HI is an interesting case though, and probably the most compelling case for stricter gun laws working and being a good idea on a national level. The right loves to point out that Chicago has strict gun laws but they still have plenty of gun violence. Of course, strict gun laws locally don’t matter too much when you can just purchase the guns elsewhere (like right next door in IN) and drive them into the city. In HI though, you obviously can’t drive them in. It’s much harder to transport guns by ship or by plane. Lo and behold, they have really low rates of gun violence.
Of course, stricter laws on a national level are unlikely to happen anytime soon.
magic – tourists from other countries ARE at risk – I have personally met 2 English people who were shot in the head while visiting the US. The odds are small, obviously, but to people who are very very unused to gun culture it is incredibly offputting.
Both of them survived btw!
@ Ellesar
To give you an idea as to how typically Yorkshire my parents are, there was an incident years ago when 2 British tourists were killed after taking a wrong turning on leaving the airport.
As they were locals it was all over the news, including a comment that many people were cancelling holidays as a result.
My dad rang up the travel agent to see if this was true (it was) and as a result secured him and my mum a two week holiday in the same area for £149 each.
When I pointed out the victims were from the same village my parents response was that “We only really knew them to say hello to”!
http://i1198.photobucket.com/albums/aa451/capriciouslyme/YES.gif
As we all know, most rape is not the stranger in the alley. It happens, but it’s rare (I carry my keys to get inside quickly not as a rape or murder preventative, but as a mugging preventive. That’s the type of crime that happens a lot between strangers). It’s so much more likely to be someone the victim trusted enough to be alone with willingly. Not only does the gun as a self defense narrative make the victim responsible for preventing rape, it also keeps the public believing that a rapist is a lurking creepy stranger rather than the upstanding community members they so often are.
@ loqura and WWTH
I hope I clarified the point I was making in my posts above. Certainly not suggesting women have any responsibility for stopping rapists or that the use of guns is a major factor in that. I’m well aware that the stranger rape thing is far less common (although obviously still too prevalent) than the acquaintance variety.
The issue I was addressing is why some women choose to carry firearms and how statistical arguments may not dissuade them from thar viewpoint.
The problem with deterrence arguments is that it’s usually impossible to measure the prior probability that someone would have been deterred from committing a crime given that more people owned guns. We can only assign that a value based on the degree to which we subjectively believe something, which is (usually, unless you know what you’re doing) a bullshit research method.
That chart. Yikes.
Alaskan is going to go hang head in shame for not knowing exactly how crummy AK is at handling guns.
Criminy.
@ History Nerd
Yeah, without a control group and the ability to fix all other variables any results are pretty meaningless.
But people will form their own subjective view anyway, and as mentioned, that’s not necessarily amenable to logical argument and persuasion anyway. If a woman feels a gun will keep her safe, how do you convince her otherwise? And perhaps as important, should you even try?
The fact is that some women have used guns to successfully defend themselves. It doesn’t matter that the number may be small. You’ll be unlikely to convince them to give up guns.
And for women who believe a gun will keep them safe, they’re not going to be interested in overall gun deaths. That’s irrelevant to them. They, quite understandably, are only considering their own circumstances.
We focus a lot on the NRA but they’re not the only factor. Gun purchases rocket after mass shootings. The people buying aren’t all NRA members. They’re ‘average’ citizens. How do you win them over to the idea of stricter gun control?
@Magic
Yes, foreigners had better be tough if they want to visit the USA. If not, we don’t want them and their money.
I don’t know who the Midnighter is but I like that advice; especially the last bit.
The Midnighter is a openly gay superhero from the comic book series ‘The Authority’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnighter
Also, it’s pretty likely the deterrence value of gun is exactly zero even for stranger-in-an-alley rape. I think rapists (and criminal in general) aren’t deterred by a small chance that they will be shot in the face.
I base that belief on the relatively famous case of hanging as penalty for pickpocketing. It didn’t worked, because way too few pickpocketers were took, both before and after that, so pickpocketers weren’t deterred.
Note that even if litteraly all women had guns, the odds of a rapist to get a face full of bullet would likely still be pretty weak, because the aggressor can have a gun too, and is likely to be prepared for the confrontation.
In other words, the true detterence for rapists will be to A – reliably catch rapist and B – have them being shamed by the society for that. For some reason, it’s the exact opposite of the goal of MRAs on both account : they want
That work for just about any other crime, of course. You can lower a particular crime only by catching culprits and giving them a non-slap-on-the-wrist sentence (don’t need to be particulary harsh either), or by making it way too hard to do for the reward, which can be done for theft but not really for rape.
@Fabe: It’s always good to learn about gay superheroes, especially ones that are married and have kids!
Thanks for that! 030
@Alan – Feeling safe or unsafe is fairly (though not completely) subjective, yes. For example, I feel creeped out walking through parks in the evening that have really bright lights, but other people feel safer that way. (I dunno. Something about floodlights unsettles me.)
But I don’t think the issue here is getting individuals to give up their guns. It’s more about general regulation.
@ fabe
Cheers for that.
Must confess nor really read comics since the great days of British stuff like “Action” and 2000AD (when it was good).
There’s also a chance that the rapist can take the gun the woman had and use it against her as well, thus making the situation more dangerous for her than it would be for the rapist.
BTW, Alan, I don’t mean to be picking fights with you (in the other thread I mentioned Hannah Arendt had a different opinion about totalitarianism, but that wasn’t really meant to be an argument against you, just another view.)
In other news, I’ve got a rather phallic-shaped zucchini. Can I protest with that? 🙂
@ Olhman and epitome
The deterrence thing is something we had a conversation about a while back. There were a lot of differing views.
We also need to consider general and individual deterrence. General deterrence can be things like chances of being caught, sentencing etc.
Individual deterrence just relates to a particular event. Then rational criminals apply a cost benefit analysis. The chances of being hurt can obviously appear as a cost. That’s something key to self defence. It’s not about necessarily ‘winning’ it’s just about making the potential risk too high. It’s like the “Moscow Criterion” in military strategy.
@ epitome
Oh, don’t worry, didn’t even consider you were. I like debates and I’m more than happy to hear other people’s views. On most subjects I don’t have a settled view anyway (certainty is something to be wary of) and I’m also quite capable of sincerely believing wholly contradictory views at the same time. I see cognitive dissonance as a desirable skill rather than a problem.
Oh, and as for protesting I think it only becomes an issue if you’re waving around your zucchini shaped phallus.
I live a few miles south of the State Game Lands. Additionally, residents around here hunt on their own land. Hunting season is a few months away. I’ve had hunters with their rifles walk across my property. Hunters walking up and down the street I live on…several years ago, my cat went missing THE VERY FIRST DAY of hunting season. I never saw him again. VERY SUSPICIOUS, DON’T YOU THINK?
Please, I have nothing against hunters or hunting, as long as they’re obeying the laws and using their weapons safely.