Study of Texas Tech University Community’s Perception about Campus Carry
Abstract
Campus carry is a term to define carrying guns on campus by people older than twenty-one years old. This has been an important topic to argue about in the past recent years nationwide, mostly because people’s opinions toward overall safety of campuses are different, and often completely opposed to each other. Pro-gun advocates believe that the general safety of campuses would be diminished by this law, whereas anti-gun advocates think the opposite. This proposition has been a case of debate in Texas Tech University (TTU) more frequently since the Texas Legislature passed the law of carrying guns on campus, effective by October 1, 2016. We, as an advanced English writing class at TTU, were interested in studying the situation on our campus regarding this law, and people’s perspective toward that. In this study were reviewed 12 articles, which discussed different aspects of this law from both sides. Different possible effective parameters were considered in the articles such as political view, gender and age. Moreover, the debates and examples given by both sides to back up their claim to study whether or not the campus carry law would increase the overall safety of campuses were discussed. In order for us to see what people thought at TTU, we conducted a poll among 148 respondents, all associated with the university, and gave them 26 questions which were chosen based on our hypotheses. Then, we tabulated the data into Excel and analyzed them closely to see what the results meant and how they could guide us to reach a conclusion about the perception of the majority of people. Interestingly, we observed that about fifty-nine percent of respondents believed that the campus was going to be a less safe place to study and work. This result can be of interest of those who want to learn about TTU’s general perception about this case; however, the number of respondents might not reflect the whole population of Texas Tech University.
Keywords: campus carry, Texas Tech campus carry law, gun carry survey- Sina Saravi
Investigating Red Raiders’ Perceptions of Campus Carry Law in Texas Tech University
Abstract
According to the recent news Texas Tech University (TTU) is going to enact the Campus Carry law on Sep. 1, 2016. This law gives the permission to TTU members to carry concealed licensed guns on campus. There were some debates whether this law would make the university safer or not. The supporters believed that it could be helpful in case of mass shooting incidents or assaults to carry guns, while others opposed. The opponents brought up reasons such as immaturity of young students who might be involved with alcohol, higher risk of hurting innocent people in mass shooting incidents with more armed people, and also the possibility of using victims’ guns against them in case of assaults. In order to investigate TTU members’ perception of Campus Carry law, we conducted a survey among 148 people in TTU. The results were statistically evaluated in an Excel file and used to examine the correctness of the hypotheses we made about public perception of this law. Overall, more than half of the participants in the survey believed that campus carry would decrease the university’s safety.
Key words: Campus Carry law, Texas Tech University, guns- Soraya Honarparvar
Gun Control
Abstract
This paper discusses the issue of the Campus Carry Law (CCL) in Texas Tech
University (TTU). Campus Carry Law is a law that was passed in 2015 in
Texas, which allowed students to carry guns on campus. I chose this
topic since I was interested to know how other students and faculty felt
about this new law, and whether this law was necessary on campus? In
this paper, I used several sources, which supported my hypotheses. We
also carried out a survey within the TTU campus. We had 148 respondents,
which included faculty, staff and students. This study talked about
different parties and who was most likely to handle guns. Also, it
talked about how faculty and staff felt when their classroom had guns.
Moreover, we found out women and men’s feelings about safety on campus
and where guns should be allowed on campus. There were different
opinions regarding carrying guns on campus. Some of them supported the
law, and others opposed it. We learned from this survey that many
people would like to support CCL, but they do not trust others who have
guns on campus. -Samah
Keywords: Campus Carry Law, guns on campus,
A Study of Campus Carry
Abstract
In
2016, colleges and universities in Texas will have to allow concealed
weapons at campus. This new law has stirred public discussions and has
become a controversial subject. In Fall 2015 at Texas Tech University,
an ESL advanced English writing class dedicated a research survey to the
topic of campus carry. This survey was distributed to the community of
Texas Tech University. The ESL class got some statistic results from
students and faculty regarding their opinions about campus carry from
different perspectives. (Xiaomiao Wang)
Keywords: Campus Carry Law, guns on campus.
Survey of Campus Gun Carry at Texas Tech University
Abstract
Texas
passed the campus gun carry law and will allow campus gun carry
beginning September 2016. A survey research was run in Texas Tech
University. The research indicated that most students and faculty
members were found to disagree with campus gun carry. Females were less
likely to support gun carry and they are less likely to carry guns even
if they are allowed to. We found some differences among students in
different colleges of the university in terms of who is more likely to
support campus carry. Campus carry opponents generally estimate a
relatively lower amount of guns on campus. Texas Tech University and the
State of Texas may need to reconsider about the campus gun carry issue.
Keywords: Campus Gun Carry, Texas Tech University, female
Author: Ruizhi Chen
Campus Carry in Texas Tech University
Abstract
The aim of this study is to examine the views of Texas Tech community about the campus carry law. The participants were 148 undergraduate and graduate students, and faculty at TTU. Also, each member of the survey team interviewed 12 participants. Most participants were Americans, but others were allowed to participate. The data were collected through a survey that has 26 questions, which was divided among eight international students, one teacher’s assistant and the instructor of the class. The main result of the survey showed that the majority of the TTU students and faculty were against the campus carry law. Also, this study showed that the majority of TTU population believe that carrying guns would make women safer. However, the majority of women at TTU were against campus carry. Also, Texan participants supported the campus carry law more than non-Texans.
(Ebtehal Alhashem)
Keywords: campus carry, guns, students, campus, Texas Tech University.
Study of the Opinion of Texas Tech University’s Community on the Issue of the New Campus Carry law
Abstract
This article explores the opinions of different groups of people among the Texas Tech University’s community about the new campus carry law that is supposed to be in effect starting January 2016.We conducted a survey consisting of 26 questions to investigate people’s opinion, and we managed to collect a total of 148 surveys. Although our sample was not completely representative of the community of Texas Tech University (TTU), we found out some really interesting results, the most important of which being the fact that although majority of the community don’t believe that more guns make the campus a safer place, they don’t trust others with guns. This fact may have some adverse effect on the campus, as many people will start carrying guns just to be safe around other people whom they assume are also carrying guns. The increase in the number of guns on the campus may eventually result in horrible incidents such as mass shootings or deadly assaults.
Pouria Nourian
Discussions on Gun Carry on Texas’ Campus
Abstract
This
paper talked about gun carry issues in Texas. It discussed the
background and history of usage of guns in Texas and gun accidents in
the United States. Several authors’ opinions about concealed gun carry
were summarized and analyzed also. In the paper, a survey in Texas Tech
University was made about gun issues. We asked 26 questions about gun
carry in this survey. Based on this survey, we got data and analyzed and
talked about our hypotheses. The limitations of this survey and what we
should do in the future are also presented in this paper. (Lu Guo)
Keywords: gun carry, campus, attitudes, survey, safe, danger
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Discussions on Gun Carry on Texas’ Campus
Discussions on Gun Carry on Texas’ Campus
Abstract
This paper talked about gun carry issues in Texas. It discussed the background and history of usage of guns in Texas and gun accidents in the United States. Several authors’ opinions about concealed gun carry were summarized and analyzed also. In the paper, a survey in Texas Tech University was made about gun issues. We asked 26 questions about gun carry in this survey. Based on this survey, we got data and analyzed and talked about our hypotheses. The limitations of this survey and what we should do in the future are also presented in this paper. (Lu Guo)
Keywords: gun carry, campus, attitudes, survey, safe, danger
Introduction
Debate on guns seems to never stop in the history of the U.S. Apart from the debate on the use of guns in daily life, the use of guns in public is a big social agenda in people’s talk. There were a few mass shootings on campuses in history, such as the University of Texas at Austin in 1966, the University of Iowa in 1991 and Virginia Tech University in 2007 (Los Angeles Times Staff, 2015). In 79 schools, mass shootings took place on campus since the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in 2012 (Ries, 2014). Meanwhile, laws and regulations on gun control will make changes in the wake of shooting events. From 1996 to 2013, there were 1,066 accidental shooting deaths in Texas, based on the data provided by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Canceledcampus.org 2015).
In addition, Texas has the largest percentage of federal firearms license holders among other states (Downing, 2015). Also Texas’ laws have few restrictions on gun ownership, and the state has “actively lobbied gun makers to move to the state” (Downing, 2015. Para 5). Texas allows citizens to carry long guns, such as rifles and shotguns (Downing, 2015).
Fifty years have passed since the mass shooting in University of Texas at Austin in 1996, and a new bill allowing students to carry concealed guns on campus has become the center of talk recently (Kingkade, 2015). It will take effect in August 2106 at universities and in August 2017 at community colleges (Pernadez & Montgomery, 2015).Because of this bill, Texas will be the eighth state allowing guns to be carried on campus after Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Oregon, Utah and Wisconsin, according to National Conference of State Legislatures (Pernadez & Montgomery, 2015).
At the same time, some people support this movement, saying it will make campus safer; on the other hand, there are citizens against this bill, insisting that it will bring more danger than ever before. Opponents questioned that CHL holders would lead to suicides in campus (Canceledcampus.org 2015). In this paper, we made a survey of the various opinions about this topic and made a survey in Texas Tech University, based on the difference between female and male, undergraduate students and graduate students, Texas citizens and non-Texas citizens, faculty and students, over 21-year old students and under 21-year old students.
Literature Review
There were a lot of Democrats and Republicans who argued their opinions about gun carry on campus. For instance, Senator Craig Estes, who is a Republican, holds the opinion that we should believe in citizens who have concealed-carry licenses because they would be responsible for themselves and the idea of grabbing guns to shoot others is “far-fetched” (Downing, 2015). In addition, another Republican and State Representative, Jonathan Stickland, was quoted as saying, “The criminals aren’t going to obey the laws. It’s the responsible folks who we should be encouraging to protect themselves in the community they live in” (Pernadez & Montgomery, 2015. Para 13).
In contrast, one Democrat, Senator Rodney Ellis, believed that guns would make more danger (Mooney, 2015). The fact is that all Republicans supported it and all Democrats opposed it on the day of voting for the bill in the House (The Associated Press, 2015). For Democrats, they raised the concern of the negative consequences of gun carry. They thought this bill would bring “public confusion, potentially decreased safety and a one-size-fits-all approach” (Benning, 2015). On top of that, they worried about “racial profiling, added expenses for law enforcement and unnecessary alarm to the public” (Benning, 2015. Para 13).
Apart from that, it seems that students and faculty in universities have similar attitudes about the issue of gun control. It is true that one University of Texas’ professor has been resigned because of this new bill (Stakes, 2015). The Chancellors of both the University of Texas System and the Texas A&M University System both disagree with this bill. William McRaven, the UT Chancellor, wrote a letter disapproving the new bill (Rumpf, 2015). In addition, TAMU Chancellor John Sharp wrote a letter also insisting that they would not support this bill officially, nor were they totally against it (Rumpf, 2015). In Sharp’s letter, he wrote, “Having licensed gun owners in possession of legal weapons on our campuses does not raise safety concerns for me personally,” “The real question is this: ‘Do I trust my students, faculty and staff to work and live responsibly under the same laws at the university as they do at home?’ Of course I do!” (Rumpf, 2015. Para 9).
On top of that, UT-Austin senior Mac McCann argued that Texas universities would spend tens of millions of dollars if the bill were implemented and it was unfair to give more control to private schools than to public schools (Stakes, 2015). In addition, he pointed out that this new bill would limited dialogue within classrooms (Stakes, 2015).
Regarding students’ and professors’ attitudes, a survey in 2003 shows 80% of students and nine of ten faculty members thought it would not be safe if a law allowed guns to be carried on campus (Kaufman, 2015). Another survey made by Virginia 21, gave the result that 83% of Virginian college students were against the proposal (Atkins, 2013). Specifically, Alexis Woods, a student majoring in Biology, thought the campus would be less safe if the concealed gun was allowed to be carried on campus (Hawkins, 2015). In addition, another sophomore named Michael Comfort questioned whether the campus would be safe if more crazy students were allowed to carry their guns on campus than ever before (Castro-Crist, 2015).
The University of Texas’ professors suggested that bringing guns would suppress free speech and academic freedom (Kingkade, 2015). The reasons were people may be hesitant to deal with controversial subjects for fear of someone using their weapon in an emotional situations (Kingkade, 2015).
For the implement of this bill, Texas Tech Chancellor Robert Duncan told the public that there would be a lot of things to do before the new bill took effect. There would be a list of guidelines and principles for concealed handgun license holders to obey. Besides, there would be storage areas where CHL holders could store their weapons (Michael, 2015). In his mind, those CHL holders have already got specific training and they were statistically less likely to commit crimes, particularly weapons violations (Michael, 2015).
Moreover, the debate on whether women should carry guns to protect themselves is highly discussed among citizens. Supporters hope that the national spotlight on sexual assault will help them to win the passage of the bill and contend women can protect themselves in the accident of sexual assault. Lean Gunn Barrett, the executive director New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, thinks that women should carry guns in campuses. He points out that campuses are “some of the safest places" and women are not strong enough to carry guns. What's more, it is argued that the chances of shooting would be increased if women were allowed to carry guns because women’s guns ae more likely to be turned on them than men’s (Hawkins, 2015).
However, Vasilinda, victim of attempted rape while in college disagrees with Barrett, insisting that women can protect themselves with guns. She blamed that she would be rescued if she had the chance to carry guns during the rape (Hawkins, 2015). In addition, some experts in sexual assault said that women are usually hurt by someone they knew, even a friend. In this case, it would be hard for them to use guns to protect themselves even they could have access to guns (Schwarz, 2015). Opponents of gun carry also pointed out that “Allowing guns on campus will arm the perpetrators of sexual violence.” And “sexual violence has increased on campuses where Concealed Carry has been implemented” (Canceledcampus.org 2015).
Hypothesis
According to the issues discussed above, I had some hypothesis about gun control in campus.
• I predicted that Texas Tech University’s Republicans support this bill of allowing guns carried on campus and Texas Tech University’s Democrats would be against the new law.
• I believed that the majority of students would not support gun carry on campus for the consideration of safety.
• I predicted that professors and faculty would not like students are allowed to carry guns.
• I predicted that women would be less likely to allow to carry guns on campus.
• I predicted that most people think Tasers can be used instead of concealed guns in case of danger.
Methods
In order to address the hypotheses listed above, we designed a questionnaire which listed 26 questions, including age range, gender, nationality, attitudes towards various gun issues relative to bill of allowing gun carry on campus. The reason we did this kind of survey was due to its simplicity, easy data organization, and access to unlimited respondents. We had an agreement that we would target Texas Tech University's students, faculty and staff in our survey which contains graduate, undergraduate, male and female, urban and rural, Democrat and Republican.
Texas Tech University is a public institution was found in 1923 (USNEWS, 2015). The current enrollment is more than 31,000 and including 28,632 undergraduate students (USNEWS, 2015). This university’s students are 45% of female and 55% of male (Figure 1). They are 64% Caucasian, and 36% are from ethnically diverse populations. Hispanic (17.6%) and African-American (5%) students comprise the largest ethnic populations on campus (Texas Tech University, 2015) (Figure 2).
The reason we targeted Texas Tech University is based on the accessibility and location to our survey. We believed that they could be qualified to be considered the representation of United States' university students in general.
The questionnaire was made available on September 22, 2015 and closed a week later on September 27, 2015. During the survey, participants' critical questions and feedback were welcomed, which would improve our analysis on the data. The questionnaire was based on the yes/no question and a few of them explained their reasons for Yes/No. Most of the questionnaires we did in Texas Tech's classrooms, college buildings and Texas Tech University Library. After we collected questionnaires, we used Excel to help us get the final data. We would analyze these data and using these data deal with the hypotheses listed above.
Results
After we collected 148 total surveys, we analyzed these data. There were 76 males and 72 females in our survey, which equally constituted the whole number of participants; there were 133 students and 13 non-students in this survey.
Before the analysis, we suspected that women were less likely to carry guns on campus, and we were right. We found that women would not like to carry guns. The truth is 63 out of 72 women (87%) would not be likely to get guns on campus if they were allowed to. In addition, 53% of women (38 out of 72) thought they would not use guns in a campus shooting. Thus, our hypothesis about women being less likely to carry guns on campus was right, and the data concluded that more than half of them would not like to use a gun on campus.
The second hypothesis was that the majority of students would not like guns to be carried on campus. According to the survey, we found that most students were likely to say they hope guns can be carried on campus. Because the data showed there were 102 out of 133 students (76%) who would not get guns even though they were allowed to. Thus, it can be a result that students would not like support campus gun carry.
We thought the Republicans would support this bill more than the Democrats as one of our hypothesis. There were 46 participants who were Republican, and 29 Democrats in this survey. We found Republicans were would more likely to support the bill of carry campus than Democrats. For these Republicans, there were 27 people (64%) who thought they would not take guns on campus when they were allowed to. In contrast, 96% of Democrat (28 out of 29) would not like to carry guns on campus. It is concluded that the number of Republicans who supported the new bill of gun carry on campus was greater than that of Democrats. These data confirmed our hypothesis that allowing guns carried on campus is more to satisfy Republicans’ interests, and from these data we predict that Republicans would like to believe that guns would make citizens safer.
For other useful information, we concluded that people cared about their family members and most of them would not like their family members taking guns on campus. Because we found that 60% of people (90 out of 148) thought they would not let their family members, such as wife, husband, or sister carry guns on campus, and only one person showed he or she did not care about it. What’s more, we thought guns should be allowed anywhere on campus. The fact was the majority of people thought no places should allow carrying guns on campus, which contained 52% in total number; 33% of people (50 out of 148) thought classrooms were the second place elected that it was appropriate to allow guns to be carried (Figure3).
We thought that people would like to use Tasers instead of guns in our hypothesis. And we were right. For people’s attitude about what ways to replace guns, we inferred that Tasers should be the substitutes causes the majority people recommend Tasers. In the survey, 37% (55 out of 148) people thought Tasers should be the substitute to guns and 31% (46 out of 148) participants thought mace was better than guns (Figure 4).
Meanwhile, we predicted that people would not like other people to carry guns on campus. We were right. We found that 81 out of 148 people (55%) showed they would feel more nervous in general if they found out a classmate was carrying a gun and they could not concentrate on class. Thus, more than half of the participants in the survey would not like to take guns with them (Figure 5).
In this survey, we only collected 7 non-faculty employees in Texas Tech University. Therefore, we could not figure out the professors’ attitudes to campus carry. And we could not confirm our hypothesis about whether professors support or against this new bill.
More importantly, 58% of people (87 out of 148) did not think concealed gun carry permission would make campus safer overall.
Discussion
We thought allowing guns carried on campus would more satisfy Republican’s interests and we predicted that Republicans would be more likely to believe that guns would make citizens safer. In addition, we thought Democrats would be against the new law, because they would worry about the consequences of this bill. It happened that the percentage of Republicans who supported gun carry was more than that of Democrats in our survey. In fact, the bill of gun carry on campus was passed by the Republican-dominated Legislature.
Therefore, it seems that this bill more satisfies Republicans’ interests than Democrats’. We guessed that the main reason Republicans supported this bill was that they hoped this bill would attract more gun factories and manufacturers to boost Texas’ economy. That is because in Hamilton’s post in 2013, he mentioned that former Texas Gov. Rick Perry pointed out that his activities related to gun makers were just a part of his overall economic development strategy (Hamilton, 2013). Therefore, we found that Republicans are more likely to feel that buying guns is good and Democrats are more likely to feel that nobody benefits. There may be other reasons about this fact, and we need to make further analysis and observations.
We thought the majority of students would not support gun carry on campus for the consideration of safety. This happened, that when they were asked whether they would get a gun on campus if they were allowed to and whether they would use guns in a campus shooting, the most students answered “No”. For this reason, we thought guns would make campus more dangerous in their minds. They may have been afraid of those crazy students who cannot control themselves and make mass shooting possible on campus. In addition, most students felt nervous when they found other classmates with guns in classes. They would like to display guns but would not like others to carry guns. It seems that students are more likely to more to trust themselves than trust than others. It is an interesting contradiction which is related to psychological issues. Regarding this problem, I think we will do research about what happens when campus becomes more dangerous and what students will do in different dangerous situations.
We thought women would be less likely to say that would carry guns on campus than men. This happened; most women in our survey said they would not take guns on campus, and men also made similar arguments about whether women should carry guns on campus. We think maybe it is relative to historical issues, in which women had fewer chances of shooting guns than men. Besides, we think women are less violent than men. They may not be prone to using guns when they are angry. Another factor may be relative to the continence. Women may think it is inconvenient to take guns with them considering the size of concealed guns. What’s more, some people have argued that guns cannot be used to protect women in the sexual assaults, because the sexual assaults usually happen among friends or people who are acquainted. In this case, we will focus on what ways women can protect themselves when in danger, including gun shooting and sexual assaults.
In this survey, we found several other important findings. First, most people thought guns would not make them safer in the case of a mass shooting. Second, even though most students and professors did not support the bill of gun carry on campus, Texas’ government still passed this bill. Therefore, we need to explore the reason for passing the bill under this conflict. Third, 63 out of 148 participants (42%) said they could not handle a gun well under pressure. Nearly half of participants seem to feel that people should be trained under mass shooting conditions. In addition, professors and faculty did not support this bill either, according to the survey. They work on campus and are afraid that some crazy students might shoot them if they get low grades or are not satisfied with the service provided by faculty.
Limitations
During this survey, we found there were several limitations. The number of participants should be enlarged and could not represent everyone’s feelings. The interviewees we asked came from different majors and colleges, but the distribution was not equal. For example, 42 out of 148 participants came from the Engineering College. We should make equal representatives from every colleges.
Meanwhile, the number of different roles in the survey should be enlarged as well, such as professors, faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students. In this survey, we only interviewed 13 faculties and 7 professors in Texas Tech University.
In addition, we did not take race difference into our survey. There was an African American Organization named Warfield Center for African and African American Studies argued that “We demand that firearms be banned in all spaces occupied by Black people on our campus” (2015). It seems that African American have increased sensitivity about this gun issue. We were not sure of the different attitudes towards gun carry in different races and we could have found out. We were not sure that this new bill would brought racial problem neither. According to University of Texas-Austin history professor Jorge Canizares-Esguerra and UT-El Paso political science professor Patrick Timmons, both of them thought this bill relative to racial problem, “with supporters of gun rights cast as white racial oppressors who are the heirs of slavery, Jim Crow, and other acts of settler colonialism” (Neff, 2015. Para 5). Thus, we will make a research on special social groups’ attitudes towards the issues of carry campus and analysis whether this new bill would brought racial problems.
Apart from that, whether CHL holders would result in suicides on campus is a question that should be considered. We may add questions in our survey, such as, “Do you think people will commit suicide on campus when they are allowed to carry guns?” In addition, we were not sure of the parents’ attitudes to this bill, or whether they think it would be safe or dangerous if their children were allowed to carry concealed guns on campus. Likewise, other consequences should be evaluated and analysis result from the issue of gun carry on campus in our future research.
Conclusion
Because of the passage of bill of gun carry on campus in Texas. The gun carry issue has been a heated topic among public again. Thus, we made a survey about gun carry on campus. From the survey, we found that the majority students would not like concealed guns to be carried in campus. We hope the university administrators should take gun carry seriously and make special regulations of this bill, such as regulate special free-gun zones. Before of that, we think universities should make comprehensive survey about the gun carry issue. In addition, university should make training to students, faculties and staff who eligible to concealed guns. For lawmakers, they should make more strict laws for CHL holders. We hope this bill would provide more safety than before and guns should be tools to protect ourselves rather than weapons to increase the danger on campus.
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http://www.ammoland.com/2015/11/before-saying-another-word-about-campus-carry-opponents-need-to-read-texas-gun-laws/#axzz3sThus32r
Texas Tech University. (2015). the TTU Student Population. Retrieved on November 10, 2015 from https://www.depts.ttu.edu/scc/APA_Internship/Student.php
U.S.News. (2015). Texas Tech University. Retrieved on November 10, 2015 from
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/texas-tech university-3644
Abstract
This paper talked about gun carry issues in Texas. It discussed the background and history of usage of guns in Texas and gun accidents in the United States. Several authors’ opinions about concealed gun carry were summarized and analyzed also. In the paper, a survey in Texas Tech University was made about gun issues. We asked 26 questions about gun carry in this survey. Based on this survey, we got data and analyzed and talked about our hypotheses. The limitations of this survey and what we should do in the future are also presented in this paper. (Lu Guo)
Keywords: gun carry, campus, attitudes, survey, safe, danger
Introduction
Debate on guns seems to never stop in the history of the U.S. Apart from the debate on the use of guns in daily life, the use of guns in public is a big social agenda in people’s talk. There were a few mass shootings on campuses in history, such as the University of Texas at Austin in 1966, the University of Iowa in 1991 and Virginia Tech University in 2007 (Los Angeles Times Staff, 2015). In 79 schools, mass shootings took place on campus since the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in 2012 (Ries, 2014). Meanwhile, laws and regulations on gun control will make changes in the wake of shooting events. From 1996 to 2013, there were 1,066 accidental shooting deaths in Texas, based on the data provided by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Canceledcampus.org 2015).
In addition, Texas has the largest percentage of federal firearms license holders among other states (Downing, 2015). Also Texas’ laws have few restrictions on gun ownership, and the state has “actively lobbied gun makers to move to the state” (Downing, 2015. Para 5). Texas allows citizens to carry long guns, such as rifles and shotguns (Downing, 2015).
Fifty years have passed since the mass shooting in University of Texas at Austin in 1996, and a new bill allowing students to carry concealed guns on campus has become the center of talk recently (Kingkade, 2015). It will take effect in August 2106 at universities and in August 2017 at community colleges (Pernadez & Montgomery, 2015).Because of this bill, Texas will be the eighth state allowing guns to be carried on campus after Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Oregon, Utah and Wisconsin, according to National Conference of State Legislatures (Pernadez & Montgomery, 2015).
At the same time, some people support this movement, saying it will make campus safer; on the other hand, there are citizens against this bill, insisting that it will bring more danger than ever before. Opponents questioned that CHL holders would lead to suicides in campus (Canceledcampus.org 2015). In this paper, we made a survey of the various opinions about this topic and made a survey in Texas Tech University, based on the difference between female and male, undergraduate students and graduate students, Texas citizens and non-Texas citizens, faculty and students, over 21-year old students and under 21-year old students.
Literature Review
There were a lot of Democrats and Republicans who argued their opinions about gun carry on campus. For instance, Senator Craig Estes, who is a Republican, holds the opinion that we should believe in citizens who have concealed-carry licenses because they would be responsible for themselves and the idea of grabbing guns to shoot others is “far-fetched” (Downing, 2015). In addition, another Republican and State Representative, Jonathan Stickland, was quoted as saying, “The criminals aren’t going to obey the laws. It’s the responsible folks who we should be encouraging to protect themselves in the community they live in” (Pernadez & Montgomery, 2015. Para 13).
In contrast, one Democrat, Senator Rodney Ellis, believed that guns would make more danger (Mooney, 2015). The fact is that all Republicans supported it and all Democrats opposed it on the day of voting for the bill in the House (The Associated Press, 2015). For Democrats, they raised the concern of the negative consequences of gun carry. They thought this bill would bring “public confusion, potentially decreased safety and a one-size-fits-all approach” (Benning, 2015). On top of that, they worried about “racial profiling, added expenses for law enforcement and unnecessary alarm to the public” (Benning, 2015. Para 13).
Apart from that, it seems that students and faculty in universities have similar attitudes about the issue of gun control. It is true that one University of Texas’ professor has been resigned because of this new bill (Stakes, 2015). The Chancellors of both the University of Texas System and the Texas A&M University System both disagree with this bill. William McRaven, the UT Chancellor, wrote a letter disapproving the new bill (Rumpf, 2015). In addition, TAMU Chancellor John Sharp wrote a letter also insisting that they would not support this bill officially, nor were they totally against it (Rumpf, 2015). In Sharp’s letter, he wrote, “Having licensed gun owners in possession of legal weapons on our campuses does not raise safety concerns for me personally,” “The real question is this: ‘Do I trust my students, faculty and staff to work and live responsibly under the same laws at the university as they do at home?’ Of course I do!” (Rumpf, 2015. Para 9).
On top of that, UT-Austin senior Mac McCann argued that Texas universities would spend tens of millions of dollars if the bill were implemented and it was unfair to give more control to private schools than to public schools (Stakes, 2015). In addition, he pointed out that this new bill would limited dialogue within classrooms (Stakes, 2015).
Regarding students’ and professors’ attitudes, a survey in 2003 shows 80% of students and nine of ten faculty members thought it would not be safe if a law allowed guns to be carried on campus (Kaufman, 2015). Another survey made by Virginia 21, gave the result that 83% of Virginian college students were against the proposal (Atkins, 2013). Specifically, Alexis Woods, a student majoring in Biology, thought the campus would be less safe if the concealed gun was allowed to be carried on campus (Hawkins, 2015). In addition, another sophomore named Michael Comfort questioned whether the campus would be safe if more crazy students were allowed to carry their guns on campus than ever before (Castro-Crist, 2015).
The University of Texas’ professors suggested that bringing guns would suppress free speech and academic freedom (Kingkade, 2015). The reasons were people may be hesitant to deal with controversial subjects for fear of someone using their weapon in an emotional situations (Kingkade, 2015).
For the implement of this bill, Texas Tech Chancellor Robert Duncan told the public that there would be a lot of things to do before the new bill took effect. There would be a list of guidelines and principles for concealed handgun license holders to obey. Besides, there would be storage areas where CHL holders could store their weapons (Michael, 2015). In his mind, those CHL holders have already got specific training and they were statistically less likely to commit crimes, particularly weapons violations (Michael, 2015).
Moreover, the debate on whether women should carry guns to protect themselves is highly discussed among citizens. Supporters hope that the national spotlight on sexual assault will help them to win the passage of the bill and contend women can protect themselves in the accident of sexual assault. Lean Gunn Barrett, the executive director New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, thinks that women should carry guns in campuses. He points out that campuses are “some of the safest places" and women are not strong enough to carry guns. What's more, it is argued that the chances of shooting would be increased if women were allowed to carry guns because women’s guns ae more likely to be turned on them than men’s (Hawkins, 2015).
However, Vasilinda, victim of attempted rape while in college disagrees with Barrett, insisting that women can protect themselves with guns. She blamed that she would be rescued if she had the chance to carry guns during the rape (Hawkins, 2015). In addition, some experts in sexual assault said that women are usually hurt by someone they knew, even a friend. In this case, it would be hard for them to use guns to protect themselves even they could have access to guns (Schwarz, 2015). Opponents of gun carry also pointed out that “Allowing guns on campus will arm the perpetrators of sexual violence.” And “sexual violence has increased on campuses where Concealed Carry has been implemented” (Canceledcampus.org 2015).
Hypothesis
According to the issues discussed above, I had some hypothesis about gun control in campus.
• I predicted that Texas Tech University’s Republicans support this bill of allowing guns carried on campus and Texas Tech University’s Democrats would be against the new law.
• I believed that the majority of students would not support gun carry on campus for the consideration of safety.
• I predicted that professors and faculty would not like students are allowed to carry guns.
• I predicted that women would be less likely to allow to carry guns on campus.
• I predicted that most people think Tasers can be used instead of concealed guns in case of danger.
Methods
In order to address the hypotheses listed above, we designed a questionnaire which listed 26 questions, including age range, gender, nationality, attitudes towards various gun issues relative to bill of allowing gun carry on campus. The reason we did this kind of survey was due to its simplicity, easy data organization, and access to unlimited respondents. We had an agreement that we would target Texas Tech University's students, faculty and staff in our survey which contains graduate, undergraduate, male and female, urban and rural, Democrat and Republican.
Texas Tech University is a public institution was found in 1923 (USNEWS, 2015). The current enrollment is more than 31,000 and including 28,632 undergraduate students (USNEWS, 2015). This university’s students are 45% of female and 55% of male (Figure 1). They are 64% Caucasian, and 36% are from ethnically diverse populations. Hispanic (17.6%) and African-American (5%) students comprise the largest ethnic populations on campus (Texas Tech University, 2015) (Figure 2).
The reason we targeted Texas Tech University is based on the accessibility and location to our survey. We believed that they could be qualified to be considered the representation of United States' university students in general.
The questionnaire was made available on September 22, 2015 and closed a week later on September 27, 2015. During the survey, participants' critical questions and feedback were welcomed, which would improve our analysis on the data. The questionnaire was based on the yes/no question and a few of them explained their reasons for Yes/No. Most of the questionnaires we did in Texas Tech's classrooms, college buildings and Texas Tech University Library. After we collected questionnaires, we used Excel to help us get the final data. We would analyze these data and using these data deal with the hypotheses listed above.
Results
After we collected 148 total surveys, we analyzed these data. There were 76 males and 72 females in our survey, which equally constituted the whole number of participants; there were 133 students and 13 non-students in this survey.
Before the analysis, we suspected that women were less likely to carry guns on campus, and we were right. We found that women would not like to carry guns. The truth is 63 out of 72 women (87%) would not be likely to get guns on campus if they were allowed to. In addition, 53% of women (38 out of 72) thought they would not use guns in a campus shooting. Thus, our hypothesis about women being less likely to carry guns on campus was right, and the data concluded that more than half of them would not like to use a gun on campus.
The second hypothesis was that the majority of students would not like guns to be carried on campus. According to the survey, we found that most students were likely to say they hope guns can be carried on campus. Because the data showed there were 102 out of 133 students (76%) who would not get guns even though they were allowed to. Thus, it can be a result that students would not like support campus gun carry.
We thought the Republicans would support this bill more than the Democrats as one of our hypothesis. There were 46 participants who were Republican, and 29 Democrats in this survey. We found Republicans were would more likely to support the bill of carry campus than Democrats. For these Republicans, there were 27 people (64%) who thought they would not take guns on campus when they were allowed to. In contrast, 96% of Democrat (28 out of 29) would not like to carry guns on campus. It is concluded that the number of Republicans who supported the new bill of gun carry on campus was greater than that of Democrats. These data confirmed our hypothesis that allowing guns carried on campus is more to satisfy Republicans’ interests, and from these data we predict that Republicans would like to believe that guns would make citizens safer.
For other useful information, we concluded that people cared about their family members and most of them would not like their family members taking guns on campus. Because we found that 60% of people (90 out of 148) thought they would not let their family members, such as wife, husband, or sister carry guns on campus, and only one person showed he or she did not care about it. What’s more, we thought guns should be allowed anywhere on campus. The fact was the majority of people thought no places should allow carrying guns on campus, which contained 52% in total number; 33% of people (50 out of 148) thought classrooms were the second place elected that it was appropriate to allow guns to be carried (Figure3).
We thought that people would like to use Tasers instead of guns in our hypothesis. And we were right. For people’s attitude about what ways to replace guns, we inferred that Tasers should be the substitutes causes the majority people recommend Tasers. In the survey, 37% (55 out of 148) people thought Tasers should be the substitute to guns and 31% (46 out of 148) participants thought mace was better than guns (Figure 4).
Meanwhile, we predicted that people would not like other people to carry guns on campus. We were right. We found that 81 out of 148 people (55%) showed they would feel more nervous in general if they found out a classmate was carrying a gun and they could not concentrate on class. Thus, more than half of the participants in the survey would not like to take guns with them (Figure 5).
In this survey, we only collected 7 non-faculty employees in Texas Tech University. Therefore, we could not figure out the professors’ attitudes to campus carry. And we could not confirm our hypothesis about whether professors support or against this new bill.
More importantly, 58% of people (87 out of 148) did not think concealed gun carry permission would make campus safer overall.
Discussion
We thought allowing guns carried on campus would more satisfy Republican’s interests and we predicted that Republicans would be more likely to believe that guns would make citizens safer. In addition, we thought Democrats would be against the new law, because they would worry about the consequences of this bill. It happened that the percentage of Republicans who supported gun carry was more than that of Democrats in our survey. In fact, the bill of gun carry on campus was passed by the Republican-dominated Legislature.
Therefore, it seems that this bill more satisfies Republicans’ interests than Democrats’. We guessed that the main reason Republicans supported this bill was that they hoped this bill would attract more gun factories and manufacturers to boost Texas’ economy. That is because in Hamilton’s post in 2013, he mentioned that former Texas Gov. Rick Perry pointed out that his activities related to gun makers were just a part of his overall economic development strategy (Hamilton, 2013). Therefore, we found that Republicans are more likely to feel that buying guns is good and Democrats are more likely to feel that nobody benefits. There may be other reasons about this fact, and we need to make further analysis and observations.
We thought the majority of students would not support gun carry on campus for the consideration of safety. This happened, that when they were asked whether they would get a gun on campus if they were allowed to and whether they would use guns in a campus shooting, the most students answered “No”. For this reason, we thought guns would make campus more dangerous in their minds. They may have been afraid of those crazy students who cannot control themselves and make mass shooting possible on campus. In addition, most students felt nervous when they found other classmates with guns in classes. They would like to display guns but would not like others to carry guns. It seems that students are more likely to more to trust themselves than trust than others. It is an interesting contradiction which is related to psychological issues. Regarding this problem, I think we will do research about what happens when campus becomes more dangerous and what students will do in different dangerous situations.
We thought women would be less likely to say that would carry guns on campus than men. This happened; most women in our survey said they would not take guns on campus, and men also made similar arguments about whether women should carry guns on campus. We think maybe it is relative to historical issues, in which women had fewer chances of shooting guns than men. Besides, we think women are less violent than men. They may not be prone to using guns when they are angry. Another factor may be relative to the continence. Women may think it is inconvenient to take guns with them considering the size of concealed guns. What’s more, some people have argued that guns cannot be used to protect women in the sexual assaults, because the sexual assaults usually happen among friends or people who are acquainted. In this case, we will focus on what ways women can protect themselves when in danger, including gun shooting and sexual assaults.
In this survey, we found several other important findings. First, most people thought guns would not make them safer in the case of a mass shooting. Second, even though most students and professors did not support the bill of gun carry on campus, Texas’ government still passed this bill. Therefore, we need to explore the reason for passing the bill under this conflict. Third, 63 out of 148 participants (42%) said they could not handle a gun well under pressure. Nearly half of participants seem to feel that people should be trained under mass shooting conditions. In addition, professors and faculty did not support this bill either, according to the survey. They work on campus and are afraid that some crazy students might shoot them if they get low grades or are not satisfied with the service provided by faculty.
Limitations
During this survey, we found there were several limitations. The number of participants should be enlarged and could not represent everyone’s feelings. The interviewees we asked came from different majors and colleges, but the distribution was not equal. For example, 42 out of 148 participants came from the Engineering College. We should make equal representatives from every colleges.
Meanwhile, the number of different roles in the survey should be enlarged as well, such as professors, faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students. In this survey, we only interviewed 13 faculties and 7 professors in Texas Tech University.
In addition, we did not take race difference into our survey. There was an African American Organization named Warfield Center for African and African American Studies argued that “We demand that firearms be banned in all spaces occupied by Black people on our campus” (2015). It seems that African American have increased sensitivity about this gun issue. We were not sure of the different attitudes towards gun carry in different races and we could have found out. We were not sure that this new bill would brought racial problem neither. According to University of Texas-Austin history professor Jorge Canizares-Esguerra and UT-El Paso political science professor Patrick Timmons, both of them thought this bill relative to racial problem, “with supporters of gun rights cast as white racial oppressors who are the heirs of slavery, Jim Crow, and other acts of settler colonialism” (Neff, 2015. Para 5). Thus, we will make a research on special social groups’ attitudes towards the issues of carry campus and analysis whether this new bill would brought racial problems.
Apart from that, whether CHL holders would result in suicides on campus is a question that should be considered. We may add questions in our survey, such as, “Do you think people will commit suicide on campus when they are allowed to carry guns?” In addition, we were not sure of the parents’ attitudes to this bill, or whether they think it would be safe or dangerous if their children were allowed to carry concealed guns on campus. Likewise, other consequences should be evaluated and analysis result from the issue of gun carry on campus in our future research.
Conclusion
Because of the passage of bill of gun carry on campus in Texas. The gun carry issue has been a heated topic among public again. Thus, we made a survey about gun carry on campus. From the survey, we found that the majority students would not like concealed guns to be carried in campus. We hope the university administrators should take gun carry seriously and make special regulations of this bill, such as regulate special free-gun zones. Before of that, we think universities should make comprehensive survey about the gun carry issue. In addition, university should make training to students, faculties and staff who eligible to concealed guns. For lawmakers, they should make more strict laws for CHL holders. We hope this bill would provide more safety than before and guns should be tools to protect ourselves rather than weapons to increase the danger on campus.
References
Alford F. (2015, March 15) Say’ no’ to concealed carry on college campuses. The Cougar. Retrieved on September 25, 2015 from
http://thedailycougar.com/2015/03/05/say-no-concealed-carry-college-campuses/
Atkins S. (2013, January 19). Survey from students: no guns on campus. RVA News. Retrieved on September 25, 2015 from
http://rvanews.com/news/survey-from-students-no-guns-on-campus/81614
Associated Press (2015, June 13) Abbott signs open carry, campus carry into law. Kxan. Retrieved on October 1, 2015 from
http://kxan.com/2015/06/13/abbott-to-sign-open-carry-campus-carry-into-law/
Benning, T. (2015, February 12,). Texas open carry and campus carry bills advance to Senate floor. Dallas News. Retrieved on November 10, 2015 from
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/headlines/20150212-texas-open-carry-and-campus-carry-bills-advance-to-senate-floor.ece
Castro-Crist A. (2015). Concealed carry referendum will be open to students. Daily Toreador. Retrieved on September 25, 2015 from
http://www.dailytoreador.com/news/concealed-carry-referendum-will-be-open-to-students/article_8a829aac-4c69-11e5-92ab-03acd7a507a9.html
Concealedcampus.org (2015, November 10). Anti-Campus Carry Professors Take a Decidedly Unacademic Approach to Activism. Retrieved on November 10, 2015 from
http://concealedcampus.org
Downing Amber. (March 17, 2015). Texas Senate OKs handgun open carry bill. USA Today.
Retrieved on November 11, 2015 from
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/03/17/texas-senate-gun-open-carry/24892513/
Hamilton Reeve. (2013, March 31). Your State’s Gun Control Just Got Stricter? Come on Down! The New York Times. Retrieved on November 10, 2015 from
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/us/your-states-gun-control-just-got-stricter-come-on-down.html?_r=0
Hawkins Awr. (2015, August 25,). Gun control proponent: women too weak to carry guns for self-defense. Retrieved on November 10, 2015 from http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/08/25/vasgun-control-proponent-women-not-strong-enough-to-carry-guns-on-campus/
Michael, K. (2015, August 30). Texas Tech to Have Guidelines for Campus Carry by Oct. 1. Lubbock Online. Retrieved on September 25, 2015 from
http://lubbockonline.com/filed-online/2015-08-30/texas-tech-have-guidelines-campus-carry-oct-1#.VebGXfn0F4d
Kaufman, N. K. (2015, September 8) Concealed carry on colleges campuses: What could possibly go wrong? Huffingtonpost. Retrieved on September 25, 2015 from
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-kaufman/concealed-carry-on-colleg_b_8093306.html
Kingkade, T. (2015, June 5) Guns on Campus Bill Passes in Texas, But Gun Activists Are Not Happy) Huffingtonpost. Retrieved on September 25, 2015 from
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/05/guns-on-campus-texas_n_7520316.html
Kingkade, T. (2015, October 7) Texas Lawmaker Says Students Already Bring Guns to Class Illegally. Huffingtonpost. Retrieved on November 20, 2015 from
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fletcher-guns-in-class-texas_56154c55e4b021e856d31e35
Los Angeles Time Staff. (2015, June 18) Deadliest U.S. mass shootings. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved on September 25, 2015 from
http://timelines.latimes.com/deadliest-shooting-rampages/
Mooney, N. (2015, September 10). Exposed handguns, concealed weapons, and the new “campus carry” gun law. Inquisitr. Retrieved on September 25, 2015 from
http://www.inquisitr.com/2407303/exposed-handguns-concealed-weapons-and-the-new-campus-carry-gun-law
Neff, B. (2015, November 11). Profs Write Openly Racist Manifesto Against Campus Concealed Carry. Dailycaller. Retrieved on November 24, 2015 from http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/11/profs-write-openly-racist-manifesto-against-campus-carry/.
Pernadez, M and Montgomery, D. (2015, June 2). Texas Lawmakers Pass a Bill Allowing Guns at Colleges. The New York Times. Retrieved on September 25, 2015 from
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/03/us/texas-lawmakers-approve-bill-allowing-guns-on-campus.html
Ries, B (2014, June 10). There Have Been 74 U.S. School Shootings since Sandy Hook. Mashable. Retrieved on September 25, 2015 from
http://mashable.com/2014/06/10/school-shootings-since-sandy- hook/#zfW5jxDAR5qO
Rumpf, S. (2015, February 12). Texas Open Carry & Campus Carry Bills Pass Committee. Breitbart. Retrieved on September 25, 2015 from
http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2015/02/12/breaking-texas-open-carry-campus-carry-bills-pass-committee/
Stakes, J. (2015, November 23). Before Saying Another Word About Campus Carry, Opponents Need to Read Texas’ Gun Laws. Ammoland. Retrieved on November 24, 2015 from
http://www.ammoland.com/2015/11/before-saying-another-word-about-campus-carry-opponents-need-to-read-texas-gun-laws/#axzz3sThus32r
Texas Tech University. (2015). the TTU Student Population. Retrieved on November 10, 2015 from https://www.depts.ttu.edu/scc/APA_Internship/Student.php
U.S.News. (2015). Texas Tech University. Retrieved on November 10, 2015 from
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/texas-tech university-3644
Friday, December 4, 2015
Study of the Opinion of Texas Tech University’s Community on the Issue of the New Campus Carry law
Abstract
This
article explores the opinions of different groups of people among the Texas
Tech University’s community about the new campus carry law that is supposed to
be in effect starting January 2016.We conducted a survey consisting of 26
questions to investigate people’s opinion, and we managed to collect a total of
148 surveys. Although our sample was not completely representative of the
community of Texas Tech University (TTU), we found out some really interesting
results, the most important of which being the fact that although majority of
the community don’t believe that more guns make the campus a safer place, they
don’t trust others with guns. This fact may have some adverse effect on the
campus, as many people will start carrying guns just to be safe around other
people whom they assume are also carrying guns. The increase in the number of
guns on the campus may eventually result in horrible incidents such as mass
shootings or deadly assaults.
Pouria Nourian
Study of the Opinion of Texas Tech University’s Community on the
Issue of the New Campus Carry law
Gun control is one the most controversial
topics in the United States. The second
Amendment of the in the Constitution of the United States of America grants the
citizens of United States the right to “keep and bear Arms” (Wikipedia).
Therefore, guns have become part of the life of the American people. On May 31,
2015, the Texas Legislature approved a bill which allows license holders to
carry concealed handguns on university campuses across Texas. The bill is known
as the “campus carry” bill, and has drawn statewide opposition from universities
across Texas (Associated Press, 2015a). Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been quoted
as saying that this bill ensures the strength and security of the Second
Amendment rights (Associated Press, 2015b).
Texas Tech University is one of the well-known
universities in Texas, with almost 37,000 students enrolled as of Fall 2014,
according to the report “Texas Higher Education
Enrollments” (2015). The campus carry law will surely affect the students,
faculty and staff. It should be mentioned that in order to be able to get a
permit for carrying a gun on campus, one must be 21 or older. This means that the
majority of students will not be able to bring guns on campus, but the rest of
students, and also faculty and staff, will be able to do so.
As a group
of students in a graduate writing class in Texas Tech University, we decided to
investigate the perception of people on Texas Tech campus by doing a survey. We
aimed to study how different groups of people on campus felt about the effect
of the campus carry law on them. We wanted to find out about the difference in
opinions about campus carry among different groups, such as undergraduate
students below 21 years old versus undergraduate students above 21 years old, faculty
and staff, or international students versus American students. We also wanted
to investigate how different parameters such as political standpoint, gender,
childhood background and personality affect one’s feeling toward the campus
carry law.
Literature Review
The campus
carry law will be effective beginning on September 1, 2016, and Texas Tech University
is already preparing guidelines for the regulation of concealed handguns on
campus by October 1, 2015 (Michael, 2015). There is already a debate going on
about whether guns on campuses will actually make them a safer place or not.
Some people believe that they actually do. Considering shooting incidents at
educational places such as Columbine High School in 1999, Virginia Tech in 2007
and Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, it is believed if trained and licensed
firearms users had the chance of using their guns, the number of casualties
would be lower (Metzger 2015). Furthermore, the supporters of campus carry law
also argue that bringing legally owned guns on campus will not make the campus
an unsafe place since the crime rate among licensed gun owners is very low.
Additionally, supporters of campus carry law also suggest that women can bring
guns on campus in order to protect themselves, since sexual assaults have been
a problem on campuses (Reindl and Cocco 2015). On the other hand, there are
also people who believe guns will make campuses unsafe. It is believed that campus
carry law can not only be a threat to campus safety (as accidental or
intentional shootings may occur as a direct result of this law), but also can
be the cause of psychological damage to the campus community, as the anxiety of
dealing with armed people will affect people on campus (Clark, 2015). Also, according
to Virginia 21’s survey, 83% of college students across Virginia do not agree
with campus carry law (Atkins 2015). Also in another survey in 2013, 80% of
college students and 90% of faculty members said that they would not feel safe
if guns were present on campus (Kaufman 2015). According to the authors of the
article “Student debate guns on campus-cons” (Simsen and Humphrey 2015), the campus
carry law actually can make the campuses unsafe. They explain that in the case
of the Virginia Tech shooting, the shooter actually had a permit for carrying a
gun. Based on this argument, we wanted to investigate how different people on the
Texas Tech campus feel toward guns being present on campus. Undergraduate
students in Texas Tech University, who are the majority of the population on
the campus, consist of mostly Texans. Some of us believed that since guns
are a part of Texas’ culture, the majority of TTU students will not feel
threatened by guns on campus or will actually consider bringing guns on campus,
given the opportunity, and therefore, we wanted to try and find a
correlation between students’ background and their attitude toward campus carry
law.
As mentioned earlier, advocates of the campus
carry law argue that women can use guns on campus to defend against sexual assaults.
However, it has been said that in 33% of sexual assault incidents, the perpetrators
were victims’ intimates; and therefore, to solve the sexual assault issue on
campus, other measures must be taken (Kaufman 2015). It is also said that in
case of a sexual assault, even if the victim is using a gun for self-defense,
the attacker might overpower the victim and use the gun on her. Based on this
argument, some of us were interested to find out how women on TTU campus felt
toward the campus carry law and whether they would bring guns on campus for self-defense
purposes, given the opportunity. Some of us believed that women will
actually use the campus carry law as an opportunity to carry guns for
self-defense purposes, and we wanted to try to find out whether it was
true.
The difference between the opinions of men and
women regarding the campus carry law and gun control law in general is a topic
of interest for our class. The results of a non-partisan people poll conducted
in 2012 showed a rather big gender gap on the “idea of arming teachers and
school officials”, where the idea was supported by 47% of men and only 32%
women (Gilbert, 2013). Some of us believed that men’s attitudes toward
campus carry law is governed by their concern about the possibility of a mass
shooting occurring on campus, while women’s attitudes are influenced by their
concern about individual assault; because victims of individual assault
(especially sexual assaults) usually consist of more women compared to men.
Another subject
of interest for some of us was to find out what people thought about substitutes
for guns when it comes to self-defense. We were specifically interested to know
how many people know about Tasers and whether they thought it could be used for
self-defense purposes instead of a gun. We suspected that people who were
against guns would be in favor of other options for self-defense such as
carrying a Taser or mace; and people who were in favor of carrying guns would
prefer to have guns everywhere, even on campus.
Some of us were also interested in finding out how
people from different colleges felt toward the campus carry issue. We assumed
that based on their choice of major, people may show different opinions about
the presence of guns on the campus and even bringing them on campus, given the
opportunity. Therefore, we tried and find a correlation between students’ major
and their attitude toward the campus carry law. We suspect that students
from the college of Agriculture may be more in favor of guns compared to other
colleges because they might have a rural background.
Last but not
least, some of us hypothesized that people with risk-taking personalities
are more in favor of carrying guns on campus. This is an interesting
hypothesis, and we tried to investigate it by finding a correlation between
people who smoked and people who, given the opportunity, would own guns and
bring them on campus. Smokers can be categorized as risk-takers based on their
habit, and their attitude toward gun campus carry issue can help investigate
our hypothesis.
Methods
In order to investigate the accuracy
of our hypotheses, we decided to gather data by the means of a survey. The
survey consisted of 26 questions. Most of the questions were in the form of
Yes/No questions. We agreed that each person had to collect at least 12
surveys, 6 male Americans and 6 female Americans. We also agreed that as long
as we collected the required number of surveys, we could collect more surveys
filled out by international students. We also agreed that we would only ask the
opinion of people who were in some way a part of the Texas Tech community
(student, faculty, or staff). We agreed not to pressure or influence the people
whom we asked to fill out the surveys. We also agreed to keep track of their
comments and use those comments as valuable feedback. Each one of us also
filled out one survey.
We wanted to investigate the opinion
of people about how campus carry law would affect the Texas Tech community.
Therefore we agreed to only ask the people involved in the Texas Tech
community, not the people of Lubbock. Furthermore, since the majority of the
Texas Tech campus population consists of American students, we decided to they
should be the main focus of our survey. Therefore, we agreed that each person
needed to have at least 12 American students fill out the survey.
In some cases, we found out that
people were confused by some the questions, or had problems with the choices
provided in some of the questions. We recorded their comments as feedback to
use later to improve our survey, should we decide to make other surveys. There
were also some cases where people didn’t notice the back of the survey sheet,
and did not fill it out. These cases were considered invalid data, and were
disregarded.
Some of us were interested to find
out about women’s attitudes toward the campus carry law. We wanted to know
whether women would see this law as an opportunity to carry guns on campus for
self-defense. We also hypothesized that women’s attitude toward the law would
be influenced by their concern about individual assault. Therefore, we asked
the participants whether, given the opportunity, they would bring guns on
campus. We also asked them whether they thought Taser or mace could be a
substitute for guns when it comes to self-defense. We asked a few more questions
about their overall feeling toward the issue of guns on campus and people who
carry them.
A few of us were particularly
interested in finding out how men’s perceptions of the campus carry law differed
from that of the women. We included some questions in the survey to find out
how participants felt about the guns affecting the safety of campus during a
mass shooting incident, individual safety of a person (especially women) and
the overall safety of the campus.
Some of us were also interested in
finding out how people’s background influenced their attitude toward the campus
law; therefore, we included some questions in the survey to investigate the
participants’ background. We asked people about where they were raised and
whether they had any encounters with guns as they were growing up to see
whether their opinions about guns were affected by their past experiences. We
were also interested in finding out how people of different political standpoint
(Republican, Democrat or independent) felt toward the campus carry law and
carrying guns in general. We also asked what college they were from, to
investigate of the hypothesis some of us had (that people from the college of
Agricultural tend to be more in favor of guns), and also find how people from
different colleges felt toward the campus carry law in general.
Last but not least, some of wanted
to specifically investigate the relation between smoking and carrying a gun, as
both can be described as risk-taking personality features. Therefore, we asked
participants whether they smoked or not.
After collecting all the surveys we
could (148 in total), we entered the data into an Excel spreadsheet and used
the Excel software to analyze the data we gathered and plot different graphs to
represent them.
Results
To investigate the perception of
people on the Texas Tech campus and also investigate our hypotheses, we
collected a total number of 148 surveys from students, faculty members and
staff from different departments. Our main goal was to have an equal number of
male and female participants to study the perception of people on campus about
the campus carry better. Our results show that 51% of the participants were
male and 49% were female. This shows that we were successful in achieving our
original goal.
First, some of us hypothesized that
Texas Tech university students mostly consist of Texans, and therefore, since
guns are part of Texas’ culture, most of the students would be in favor of
campus carry law and may as well bring guns on campus, given the opportunity. We
found out that in fact the majority of the Texas Tech students are from Texas.
Our results showed that 59% of the participants were from Texas, 23% of them
were from the United States but not from Texas, and 18% of them were
international students, meaning that the first part of our assumption was
actually true. There was no question in our survey to directly ask the
participants whether they were in favor of campus carry. However, we found out
that despite their opinion about the campus carry law, the majority of the
Texan students are not in favor of guns being present on campus. We asked them
whether they would carry guns on campus if they were allowed to, and 74% of Texan
students answered with “No”.
Our next hypothesis was that women would
actually use the campus carry law as an opportunity to carry guns on campus for
self-defense purposes. Interestingly, our results indicated otherwise. We found
out that 88% of the female participants said that would not carry guns on
campus even if they are allowed to. This proves that our hypothesis can
actually be wrong. Furthermore, when asked about a proper substitute for guns, 78%
of the female participants said that a Taser could be a proper substitute for
guns on campus. This can actually mean that although women care for their own
safety, they don’t agree with the idea of guns being present on campus.
We also hypothesized that men’s attitude toward the guns would be
governed by their concern about probability of a mass shooting occurring on
campus, while women’s opinion would actually be more influenced by their
concern regarding individual assaults. In other words, we thought that men who would
think more guns make the campus safer during a mass shooting incident would also
think that more guns on campus make it a safer place overall, and women who would
think that carrying guns makes them safer in case of an assault would also
think that more guns on campus would make it a safer place overall. To
investigate this hypothesis, we tried to find a correlation between the
participants’ view of overall safety of campus after the implementation of the
campus carry law, and either their view on campus safety during a mass shooting
incident (in case of male participants) or their view on individual safety (in
case of female participants). According to our results, the majority of men who
think that guns make us safer in case of a mass shooting also think that guns
make the campus a safer place overall, that about half of our female
participants who think that carrying guns would make them safer in an assault
also think that more guns on campus would make it a safer place overall. 54% of
our male participants thought that more guns would make people safer in case of
a mass shooting, and 79% of this group thought that the campus carry law would
make the campus a safer place overall. Furthermore, 51% of the female
participants thought that carrying guns would make them safer, and 53% of this
group thought that more guns made the campus safer overall It is also worth
mentioning that only 40% of our female participants thought that more guns would
make people safer in case of a mass shooting, and 60% of the male participants
thought that carrying guns would make women safer.
One of our more interesting hypotheses
was that students from College of Agriculture would be more in favor of the
campus carry law and owing a gun in general because they might have rural
backgrounds. Unfortunately, we only had 3 participants from the College of
Agriculture (meaning only 2% of the participants), which was not nearly enough
to investigate the accuracy of our hypothesis. However, out of these 3
participants, two said that they would not get and/or carry guns on campus
after the implementation of the campus carry law. We tried to modify our
initial hypothesis and investigate it further. Since the majority of our participants
were from the college of Art and Science and the college of Engineering (29%
and 28%, respectively), we decided to see whether there was a noticeable
difference in the opinions of students from these two colleges. We found out
that the majority of students from both colleges were not in favor of guns. Only
17% of the participants from college of Art and Science and 19% of the
participants from college of Engineering said that they would carry guns if
allowed to. It seems that in this particular issue (the campus carry law),
choice of major does not have any influence on the people’s opinion.
Lastly, we hypothesized that smokers
can be viewed as people with risk-taking personality; and therefore, they will
be more willing to own and carry guns on campus. Although only 10% of our
participants were smokers, our results indicate that smokers seemed to be more
likely to own or carry guns. 33% of the smoker participants said that they
would own and/or carry guns on campus if they were allowed to. compared to only
19% of non-smokers who also said that they would not own or carry guns.
Furthermore, 66% of the smokers said that they could handle a gun under
pressure, compared to 56% of the non-smokers who said the same. Although these
data are somewhat inconclusive (meaning that the low number of smoker
participants makes any conclusion that we derive from this data doubtful), we
can say that it seems that our initial hypothesis may actually be correct, and
in fact smokers can have a higher tendency to carry guns. However, it is
possible that not all of the participants have answered this question honestly,
which would affect the outcome of the survey and will be discussed in the
Discussion section later.
Discussion
We conducted a survey of 148 participants in order to investigate
the perception of Texas Tech University’s community about the campus carry law.
Our main objective was to conduct a survey that would be representative of the
Texas Tech campus community, and while we managed to achieve this goal
regarding the gender and nationality, our survey was not able to be
representative in other cases. For example, we only had 3 participants from the
College of Agriculture, which means only 2% of our participants were from the
aforementioned college. We know that the ratio of college of Agriculture
students to the total number of students in the Texas Tech University is
definitely higher than 2%, and therefore we acknowledge that our survey was not
representative in this regard. Furthermore, we only had 148 participants, while
Texas Tech has roughly about 37,000 students. This means that our participants
consisted of only 0.4% of the Texas Tech community. If we include the number of
faculty and staff, then this number will be even lower. This is the evidence of
the biggest limitation of our survey, which is the fact that it was not
representative of the whole Texas Tech community. Despite this fact, we managed
to find very interesting results about people’s perception of the campus carry
law. Conducting a more rigorous survey about the campus carry law in the future
can be really beneficial to the Texas Tech community as the results we found
indicate interesting facts about the community that need to be further
investigated.
We hypothesized that since most of the students of Texas Tech
University are Texans and guns are big part of Texas’ culture, our participants
would be mainly Texan students and they would mostly be in favor of the campus
carry law. Although it was true that most of our participants were in fact
Texans, we found out that the majority of them were actually not in favor of
the campus carry law. These results were surprising for us at first, but after
finding out more about the role of guns in Texas’ culture by talking to people
who were raised in a family that valued Texas’s culture, we found out that
although guns are a rather big part of the aforementioned culture, Texans also
learn to handle them responsibly, and contrary to our previous belief, they
don’t think anyone can be trusted with a gun. In the case of the campus carry
law, although they believe that teachers and security guards should be armed,
they don’t think it is a good idea to arm everybody, especially young students.
We hypothesized that women would use the campus carry law as an
opportunity to carry guns on the campus for safety purposes. Contrary to our
speculations, the majority of our female participants were not interested in
carrying guns on campus. The majority of them also thought that Taser and mace could
be proper substitutes for guns for self-defense purposes. In case of an
assault, a gun can actually provide more danger for a female victim as they can
be overpowered and their gun can be used against them. We believe that this
might be the reason why women are not interested in guns as tools for
self-defense. In other words, women either do not trust themselves with a gun (because
they are afraid of being overpowered when using a gun for self-defense) or they
believe in non-lethal methods of self-defense, such as using a Taser or mace.
We believed that men’s attitude toward the guns would be governed
by their concern about the probability of a mass shooting occurring on campus,
while women’s opinion would actually be influenced by their concern regarding
individual assaults. What we found out was that in fact the majority of men who
think that guns make us safer in case of a mass shooting also think that guns
make the campus a safer place overall, and about half of our female participants
who think that carrying guns would make them safer also think that more guns on
campus would make it a safer place overall. An interesting result we found
while we were investigating our hypothesis was that 60% of our male
participants thought that women would be safer when they are carrying guns. We
believe that it actually shows that men trust women with guns, and it is
ultimately up to women to decide how they want to behave in regard to making
sure that they are safe. In other words, we think that whether women want to
carry guns or not does not have anything to do with whether men think that
women can be trusted with guns or not.
We tried to find a correlation between people’s choice of major and
their opinion on guns. Some of believed that students from College of
Agriculture would be more in favor of the campus carry law and owing a gun in
general because they might have rural backgrounds (and the rural background is
actually a major factor in their decision-making process about their major). As
mentioned earlier, our survey was not representative with regard to the number
of participants from different colleges. Therefore, we only had 3 participants
from College of Agriculture, and two of them said that they would not get
and/or carry guns on campus. Furthermore, we also looked at the opinions of
people from other colleges (mainly college of Art and Science and college of
Engineering, since the majority of our participants were from those two
colleges). We found out that in case of those two colleges, majority of our
participants were not in favor of the campus carry law. Therefore, we can say
that our initial hypothesis may be wrong, or maybe in case of the campus carry
law, the choice of major is not in any way correlated to one’s opinion of the aforementioned
issue. It may be worthwhile to investigate this hypothesis further by
conducting a more rigorous survey as it can shed more light on the correlation
between people’s choice of major and their background.
Last but not least, we had an interesting hypothesis that smokers
would have a higher tendency to own and carry guns relative to non-smokers, as
smokers can be described as people with a risk-taking personality. We only had
15 participants who said that they smoked. Out of these participants, one-third
of them said that they would own and/or carry guns, compared to only 19% of the
non-smokers who also answered the same. However, some participants may have not
answered this question honestly, mainly because they either felt ashamed or
felt that this question was too personal. It is also possible that the
participants misunderstood the question, thinking that the survey asked them
whether they smoked illegal substances. If we are to assume that all the
participants answered all the questions honestly, then we can say that our
hypothesis may actually be correct, meaning that smokers can more easily
neglect the dangers associated with carrying guns. Our assumption for the
reason behind such behavior is that smokers have a sense of bravado, meaning
that they think that bad things won’t happen to them, such as the dangers
associated with carrying a gun or even smoking itself.
Conclusion
In summary, we conducted a survey to
investigate Texas Tech’s community and their attitudes toward the campus carry
law. Despite some flaws in our method and our survey, we managed to find out
some really interesting results. We found out that most of the participants thought
that guns would help us be safer during an individual assault or a mass
shooting, but overall they believed more guns on the campus actually would not
make it a safer place. It seems that people trust themselves with guns, but
they don’t trust each other with guns. If that is the case, the campus carry
law can actually be a dangerous risk to the Texas Tech community, as it will
lead to an escalation of the behavior of carrying guns on campus, meaning that
people who initially were not interested in carrying guns on campus would
eventually do it because they don’t trust others with guns and they want to be
safe around people whom they assume are carrying guns. The increase in the
number of guns present on campus as a result of such escalation may cause
horrible incidents such as mass shooting or deadly assaults. We hope that these
findings would help Texas Tech’s campus to remain a safe place after the
implementation of the campus carry law.
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