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Richard DiStasio

Com 416

LEAP 4

5/7/18

                    The Guns Out Movement

 

    The Guns Out movement is a social media based movement meant to rally support against the issuance of the “Campus Carry” Law. The campaign strategy is to have students and staff of colleges post pictures via twitter, instagram and other social media platforms, flexing their arms with #GunsOut written on their biceps. These pictures are meant to symbolize that the only guns these students and teachers want on their campus are the “Guns”  they consider their biceps. Through this social media based protest, the guns out movement can gain great exposure leading to a larger support group, making them more powerful. My goal with this leap was to display the the true significance of this movement, and the ways in which the Guns out movement can gain support.https://www.dosomething.org/us/campaigns/guns-out-advocate

    During my production process I was able to access numerous articles and images that related to the Guns Out movement. The true strength behind this movement is based on the emotional significance that this has in the lives of students and teachers. As I learned throughout this semester, triggering emotions are one of the biggest and most powerful factors in propaganda and public movements. The Guns Out movement is riddled with strong emotions from students and teachers and that is why it is so capable of large growth. School shootings are extremely emotional for both the the families who have lost someone and the survivors alike, and fear itself is one of the most powerful emotions. This whole movement is driven by the fear of another school shooting and that is why the manipulation of this emotion is key in driving this movement further towards its goal. The Parkland, FL shooting was one of my biggest references regarding driving factors for this movement. The Parkland shooting happened in high school in the state of florida, which has very similar and lenient laws, as compared to Texas. In the state of florida a high school student can walk into a store and purchase an Ar-15, which they later used during their act of violence. In relation to the colleges in Texas, allowing a college student to bring conceal a weapon on campus does not prove to make the campus any safer. In college, students are often stressed by bad grades, workloads, and relationships between peers. It cannot be a good idea to allow stressed out students to carry weapons around campus. When people are extremely stressed out they tend to act with no rational, doing things that are not very thought through. So the issuance of a carry law on college campuses might only make these places more unsafe than they were before. This statement, is essentially the point that the Guns Out movement is trying to make. They think that even though you are allowing for guns on campus, you're just making it that much easier for someone to act with no rational while handling a weapon, which in turn can lead to another act of violence in our school systems. https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/26/us/march-for-our-lives/index.html

     At the University of Texas, where these campus carry laws have been implemented, students and teachers have began to protest with movements like “ Cocks not Glocks”. There is a law on University of Texas grounds that make it illegal to carry absurd objects, including dildos. The students of the University of Texas utilized this law to fight against the campus carry law, stating that you made it illegal to carry a sexual object on campus but you are making it legal to carry a deadly weapon on the same school grounds. So, in their protest, students handed out over five thousand dildos on campus, which were donated by sex shops around that state. The reason they chose this as their tactic was that politics are often a lot for students to get involved in. By utilizing the dildo, they made the outing more fun, and easier for students by allowing them to just strap a dildo to their backpacks and show the Texas legislature that this was not a decision that the students wanted. The utilization of Dildos goes on to challenge the perceptions around carrying a gun. The movement was meant to show that it is just as absurd to carry a gun around campus, as it is to walk around with a dildo strapped to your backpack. Due to the implementation of these laws on the U.T. campus, many teachers have begun to resign from their jobs due to insecurity in the work place.  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/25/cocks-not-glocks-texas-campus-carry-gun-law-protest

    Throughout this semester in COM416, I have truly gained a new perspective when it comes to analyzing propaganda. Prior to this class, I was never truly taught how to interpret propaganda images, and movements. I was unaware of the fact that triggering emotions can quickly get someone to believe in your propaganda or your movement. For this reason, I have chosen to analyze the guns out movement and the actions against gun violence on school campuses. This is a perfect example of how emotions can be triggered to build a support group for a movement. The Guns Out movement utilizes the fear amongst students and teachers alike, in states like Texas where campus carry laws are active, in order to help gain support and drive this movement towards success. With students being able to enter offices and school buildings armed with deadly weapons, it has left many teachers and students fearful for what could happen in the future. With more and more school shootings happening, more and more students, parents, and teachers are becoming fearful for their lives, which is why the Guns Out movement will continue to grow and prosper. Furthermore, showing that by targeting the emotions of the public, you can gain support from those with emotional ties to the movement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Work Cited 

 

Guns Out: Advocate. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.dosomething.org/us/campaigns/guns-out-advocate

 

Grinberg, E., & Muaddi, N. (2018, March 26). How the Parkland students pulled off a massive national protest in only 5 weeks. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/26/us/march-for-our-lives/index.html

 

Dwyer, K. (2017, May 25). You Can Now Protest Gun Violence by Taking a Selfie. Retrieved from https://www.teenvogue.com/story/gunsout-dosomething-college-campus-guns-campaign

 

Dart, T. (2016, August 25). Cocks Not Glocks: Texas students carry dildos on campus to protest gun law. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/25/cocks-not-glocks-texas-campus-carry-gun-law-protest

Instagram Account:

https://www.instagram.com/propaganda_by_rich/

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