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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