Mock mass shooting set for University of Texas

John Bacon | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Gun rights supporters to stage fake mass shooting Second amendment advocates are planning to stage a fake mass shooting using fake blood and guns as a way to show the need for open carry school campuses. Video provided by Newsy

Plans for a mock mass shooting and a march of gun rights supporters openly packing heat are heating up finals week at the University of Texas-Austin.

Come And Take It Texas, which claims 20,000 members, says on its Facebook page that the Life and Liberty Walk to End Gun-Free Zones is an effort to combat President Obama's "gun confiscation agenda." They are calling for an "open carry walk with our rifles and legal black powder pistols."

"Now is the time to stand up, take a walk, speak out against the lies and put an end to the gun-free killing zones," the group says in a Facebook post.

Murdoch Pizgatti, founder of the gun rights group, told USA TODAY that gun rights supporters will march about eight blocks down a street adjacent to the university, then "put our guns away." The mock mass shooting will feature cardboard cutout guns and sound effects that can't be confused with actual gunfire, he said.

"We are not shouting 'fire!' in a theater," Pizgatti said. "We are not going to start a riot."

The march and mock massacre initially were scheduled to take place on campus. Pizgatti said events were moved "about 20 feet" off campus after the school raised trespassing and other concerns. Some foes of the events are planning a "mass farting" protest nearby, even promising to provide "fart blaster" noisemakers.

He said the mock shooting is designed to show how the outcome of a shooting rampage can be altered if people are armed. A college campus — Virginia Tech in Blacksburg — was the scene of one of the nation's bloodiest massacres in 2007 when a student fatally shot 32 people before committing suicide.

The terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have prompted calls for tighter controls on guns. Pizgatti, like most gun rights activists, rejects those proposals.

"Our focus is on gun-free zones," he said. "They are blue-light specials for people who wish to do evil. Paris was a gun-free zone and those people were trapped (in the Bataclan Theater) for hours and just had to stand there waiting to be slaughtered."

Pizgatti and other gun rights supporters have been making gains in Texas. In January, the state becomes the 45 to allow modern handguns to be carried in plain view. And a law effective in August 2016 allows concealed guns to be carried in classroom, dorms and other buildings on the campuses of public universities, although it provides administrators with authority to create limited gun-free areas.

The so-called "campus carry" law led to protests on campus. The advocacy group Gun Free UT is holding a walk Sunday to mark the third anniversary of a shooting spree that killed 26 students and staff at Sand Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

History professor Joan Neuberger, who helps lead Gun Free UT, told the Austin Statesman-American that the pro-gun rally is ill-timed and offensive. Holding the events during finals weeks, she told the newspaper, "shows real disrespect for the feelings of students, faculty and staff who don’t want to have guns around them in the first place, but will be forced to put up with guns in public places in 2016."