I'm Being Trolled By Gun Rights Activists — But I Won't Back Down

In August, Ana Lopez and her fellow students at the University of Texas, Austin, organized a protest against the state’s recently enacted campus carry law, which allows students who are 21 and have a concealed handgun license to bring guns to public colleges and universities. This week, Lopez said she learned that she was the target of online threats for her work with the Cocks Not Glocks movement. She shared her story exclusively with Refinery29, and the views expressed here are her own.



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Two weeks ago, a man named Brett Sanders posted to YouTube a graphic “short film” depicting the murder of a woman involved in the Cocks Not Glocks protest of Texas’ new campus carry law. The deplorable video had one message, in my view: She’s putting herself out there as a target. Go get her.

The “she” in the video, many people believe, was based on me.

As leaders of a major anti-gun protest that made international headlines, my co-organizers and I are used to the attacks. We are used to the baseless threats of rape and murder. We have been told that we should get lined up and shot. We have been called “sluts” and “whores” ad nauseam. Even our families have been targeted.

We’ve learned to take these comments with a grain of salt.

After all, some people will just never get it. To this day, it still appalls me that the Cocks Not Glocks movement’s use of inert, harmless sex toys as protest props elicits a stronger, more violent reaction than the prospect of a drinking-age college student legally carrying a loaded handgun in their JanSport.

But what really sets this snuff film apart from the hate mail we’re so desensitized to is the ill-conceived shock factor of it all.

I felt a burning in the pit of my stomach when I first saw the video. I saw images of my friends, of our allied gun violence prevention organizations, and of our protest itself.

Due to the low quality of the video, I skipped toward the end, not thinking much about it. But then I came upon a scene in which a female Cocks Not Glocks protester who looks like me — and gets a call during the film from one of my real-life friends and fellow activists — gets shot in the head by an intruder. Sanders has since said that he had “never heard” of me before, and that the idea that he intentionally cast my doppelgänger in his film is “absurd.” But it didn’t feel that way to me.

I felt nauseous. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I felt an immense weight bear down on me. I felt horrified, disgusted, and, most of all, livid.

I quickly read through the comments, expecting to see an outpouring of disapproval, but my eyes locked on one of the top-rated comments: “Ha Ha. He should have raped her first.”

I could barely breathe.

The first thing I did was call my mom. The second thing I did was call campus police. I spent the rest of the day feeling numb and hyperaware of my surroundings. After all, I still had to worry about the presence of legal, loaded handguns in my classroom at the University of Texas, Austin, amidst all of this.

The aftermath felt infinitesimally worse, however. I worried that this video would encourage more attacks. I worried for the safety of my peers, and of my family.

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http://www.refinery29.com/2016/09/123294/cocks-not-glocks-gun-activist-violent-youtube-video

Texas gun-rights activist slammed for graphic film portraying shooting of a student protester

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/09/13/texas-gun-activist-under-fire-for-graphic-video-portraying-the-death-of-a-student-protester/


(A scene from “Never Met Her,” a short film about an anti-gun protester’s shooting death. (YouTube/Brett Sanders) )