Campus carry: Texas students will carry gigantic swinging dildos to protest new gun law

A Facebook event started by a University of Texas student is inviting participants to strap "gigantic swinging dildos" to their backpacks in reaction to new laws allowing students and teachers to carry concealed firearms. At the time of writing, over 4,000 people have indicated they will be joining the protest when the bill comes into effect in 2016.

The "campus carry" bill passed the Texas legislature in June and the first stage comes into effect on 1 August 2016. The Bill allows students and teachers to carry concealed handguns on university campuses in Texas. From August 2017, the law will apply to community colleges.

The event, along with the hashtag #CocksNotGlocks, was created by Jessica Jin, a student at the University of Texas. On the page she said: "The State of Texas has decided that it is not at all obnoxious to allow deadly concealed weapons in classrooms, however it DOES have strict rules about free sexual expression, to protect your innocence."

She went on to quote campus regulations that prohibit students from displaying or performing anything obscene. "You would receive a citation for taking a DILDO to class before you would get in trouble for taking a gun to class," wrote Jin.

In the last two weeks there have been three separate shootings at college campuses in the United States. On 1 October, at Umpqua Community College in Rosenburg, Oregon, 26-year-old gunman Christopher Harper-Mercer shot and killed 9 people before killing himself.

At Northern Arizona University on 9 October, one person was killed and three wounded when an 18-year-old freshman opened fire at a campus in the city of Flagstaff. On the same day at Texas Southern University, one person was killed and another wounded in another shooting.

One prominent opponent of the "campus carry" bill is the University of Texas's System Chancellor, William McRaven, a former Navy SEAL who directed the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden. He told CNN, "I've spent my whole life around guns. I grew up in Texas hunting. I spent 37 years in the military. I like guns, but I just don't think having them on campus is the right place."