Last week, college students at the University of Texas at Austin protested a new law allowing concealed handguns in classrooms. To fight "absurdity with absurdity," a group called Cocks Not Glocks and others carried dildos, which are banned in classrooms even as guns are allowed.

A week later, a pro-gun activist has released a graphic video depicting the fictional murder of an anti-gun protester.

In the video, an actress playing a student protester comes home, sets her dildo next to a copy of Hippie and The Communist Manifesto, and watches TV news coverage of the protests before a burglar (portrayed by a black actor for an extra dose of fear-mongering/racism) breaks in. The woman tries to fend the burglar off with a dildo and he shoots her in the head, her blood spattering onto a framed Moms Demand Action logo.

The message, apparently, is that the movement against guns on campus is actually making people less safe. In fact, keeping guns at home does not make you safer. Having guns in the home has been linked to increased risk of both homicide and accidental death. Many more women are murdered by men they know than by male strangers and women in abusive relationships are five times more likely to die at the hands of their abuser if their abuser has access to a gun.

The Dallas Morning News has more on the video:

Brett Sanders, who is perhaps best known for having paid a $220 traffic ticket with pennies, produced the video. He said he wanted to show the folly of the sex toy protest and the need for guns to be available for personal protection.

But a protest organizer said she felt threatened by it, in part because it uses the real names of some involved with the event. And a prominent gun rights group, Students for Concealed Carry, denounced the video as "reprehensible."

Ana Lopez, a UT sophomore who helped organize the protest, said the student murdered in the video is meant to depict her. In the video, the student calls Rosie Zander, a friend of Lopez's at UT who was also a prominent organizer of the protest.

A video of Zander at the protest posted by The Dallas Morning News was viewed nearly 10 million times.

Lopez said that a gun-rights activist who goes by the name Murdoch Pizgatti "choreographed" the video, posted the video and the following message on Facebook: "A prominent member of Cocks not Glocks was murdered by senseless gun violence. My condolences to Rosie Zander for losing her best friend."

Cocks Not Glocks wrote on their Facebook page that members are now being bombarded with messages about the video online, including offers of "condolences for our 'murdered' colleague."


"Remember, these people keep saying that we 'deserve' this, just for speaking out against gun culture," Cocks Not Glocks wrote. "If you don't think gun culture has a chilling effect on free speech on campus, think again."