So far, over 6,000 people have indicated on Facebook that they will attend the Campus Dildo Carry Protest at the University of Texas at Austin on Aug. 24, 2016, the first day of classes.

The event is a protest against the notorious SB 11, which allows a concealed handgun license holder to carry a concealed handgun while on the campus of a public, private or independent institution of higher education.

Jessica Jin, a UT student who organized the protest, invites anybody to participate, “Come one dildo, come all dildos,” and has branded the event with the hashtag #CocksNotGlocks.

Jin further wrote, “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. You would receive a citation for taking a DILDO to class before you would get in trouble for taking a gun to class. Heaven forbid the penis.”

Under the Texas penal code, a dildo is classified as an “obscene device,” and also falls under the category “obscene display or distribution,” an offense that is considered a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by a $500 fine.

Now, when first hearing about this, I was slightly confused by the correlation between the two, how does one relate to other? How did we get from glock to cock?

But, I then realized the protest highlights the absurdity of the wonderful state of Texas.

Let’s backtrack a little, the Republican-led legislature has decided that CHL holders can carry guns on campus, because, you know, the second amendment and all.

The controversy of their decision is highlighted by the plethora of mass shootings that have occurred across the country. The most recent shootings occurred within the last week, one in Northern Arizona University and the other in Texas Southern University. A few weeks prior to that, 10 people died after Chris Harper Mercer opened fire at Umpqua Community College in Oregon.

Something that is on the rise. A study done by the Harvard School of Public Health indicates that mass shootings are on the rise. The researchers found that from 1982 to 2011, mass shootings occurred every 200 days, and since 2011, the rate has tripled and happen every 64 days.

So, considering all of this, the Republican-led leadership in our state passed the campus carry law for our own good. Because, what can go wrong when someone is carrying a gun on campus?

Yet, the same leadership in Texas that claims to defend individual liberty, limits sexual expression. They claim to protect individual rights, yet basically make individual rights unattainable for anyone who is not a white male.

They attacked the LGBTQ community by introducing the highest number of anti-gay bills, they attacked women and imposed restrictions on reproductive health care and passed some of the most stringent restrictions on abortion clinics in the nation, and of course, they attacked immigrants and made sure to introduce a slew of anti-immigration bills.

So, basically, in the state of Texas, freedom, choice, liberty are words that only have value and meaning for a privileged few. Freedom and liberty, come in the form of guns and glocks.

That is the genius of the Campus Carry Dildo Protest, it becomes the rebellious upholding of true freedom, expression and liberty. Or that the attainment of it and in the process, it  reveals the falsity of the  “individual liberty” argument, which is what the leadership of this state has used to protect their guns

Maria Esquinca may be reached at [email protected].