Survey of Campus Gun Carry at Texas Tech University

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

Survey of Campus Gun Carry at Texas Tech University

Gun control is always a controversial public issue in the United States of America. The United States is one of a limited number of countries which allow their citizens to legally purchase and carry guns. In this country, many people believe carrying guns allows citizens to protect themselves so that gun carry is an appropriate right of a citizen, whereas some others believe public gun carry endangers the community.

Even though gun control sounds like an endless controversy in the United States, campus gun carrying is generally forbidden in most American schools, because schools are considered as safe places for students to study in peace. Moreover, in the recent years, the mass shootings, such as the Columbine High School Massacre, the Virginia Tech Shooting, the Sandy Hook Shooting, and the Aurora Theater Shooting, have occurred more and more frequently and the numbers of victims in the years with mass shootings are in an increasing trend (Mass shootings in the US are on the rise, 2012). A report indicated that 83% of Virginian College students did not agree with campus gun carry (Atkins, 2013). It appears that people in places where the shootings happened learn lessons from the past mass shootings and become more likely to support gun control laws.

Even though more and more mass shootings occurred on campuses, in 2015, campus gun carrying became legal in Texas. The Texas Legislature made a new law allowing campus gun carrying (Michael, 2015). Concealed handgun carry will be allowed on campus beginning on Sep. 1, 2016. A detailed guideline and special voluntary class for campus gun carry may be provided.

The reason that the Texas Legislature passed the campus gun carry law may be because of the special population in Texas. According to a survey made by the Texas Politics Project, more than half of the Texas population believed the current gun control law in Texas was appropriate (36%) or over strict (16%), while 34% and 9% of the people in the United States believed the current gun control law was appropriate or over strict (Public Opinion on Gun Control, 2013). Most of the Texas population believed the gun control laws should not be even stricter. Texas has a higher percentage of supporters of less strict gun control legislation compared to the United States’ overall level.

We made a survey to find out the Texas Tech University students’ and faculty’s opinions about campus gun carrying and how they would react to campus gun carrying. We also tried to find if there were any specific groups of people who preferred campus gun carry in this research.

Literature Review

Campus Gun Carry

Many people believe campus gun carry can protect them from mass shooting (Redmon, 2015). Texas Tech Chancellor Robert Duncan was quoted as saying that people with concealed carry licenses were statistically “less likely to commit crimes, particularly weapons violations” (Michael, 2015, para. 18). Weapons were allowed in many public areas other than schools, but gun carry did not create significant threats to these areas (Welch, 2015).

Even though to allow gun carry nationwide may be appropriate, it may still be not appropriate to allow gun carry in some specific places, including campus. A student, Alexis Woods, was quoted as saying that campus gun carry tends to make campus become a more dangerous place than it was (Alford, 2015). A 2013 survey indicated that around 80% of the students and more than 90% of the faculty members would not feel safe if campus gun carry was allowed (Kaufman, 2015). Campus gun carrying will not only make the campus more dangerous, but also make students and faculty feel uncomfortable so that they may not be able to focus on study and research. Moreover, Mr. Ferner (2012) said people with a gun may not effectively stop mass shooting criminals. Jenna Simsen and Lindsay Humphrey (2015) believed concealed gun carry may not necessarily reduce the possibility of mass shooting on campus. It may however make faculty members and students who have to take care of their children feel uncomfortable. Moreover, they also believed campus gun carry might increase the possibility of mass campus shooting due to alcohol. Their guess may be correct because Kaufman (2015) mentioned in her article that “79 percent of reported campus assaults involved alcohol”. Joanna Cattanach (2015) supported Mr. Ferner’s, Jenna Simsen’s, and Lindsay Humphrey’s opinion by telling that many of her students became the victims of crimes during her career as a faculty member. In the same vein, the criminals killed their classmates and teachers in the Columbine High Massacre (Welsh, 2012).

Hypothesis. According to the literature review, we thought it was reasonable to make the following hypothesis: most students will feel uncomfortable with classmates with guns and be against campus gun carry. They believe campus gun carry can make campus less safe.

Faculty Satisfaction and Recruiting

The campus security issue may not be the only issue Texas Tech University has to consider after it allows campus gun carry. Campus gun carry may either positively or negatively affect faculty recruiting.

Madi Bixler, Vice President of the University of Texas at Dallas chapter of Network of enlightened Women (NeW), was quoted as saying that she believed campus gun carry could positively affect recruitment because it could help universities recruit conservative faculty members (Salgado, 2015).

As a matter of fact, most faculty may oppose campus gun carry rather than agree with it. A survey made by the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin found that 94% of faculty members oppose campus gun carry (Brawer, 2015). Even though a university has a sound security system, campus gun carry may still make students and faculty members feel uncomfortable on campus (Clark, 2015). Faculty members may be more against campus gun carry than students. As mentioned earlier, in a 2013 survey, 90% of the faculty members would not feel safe if campus gun carry was allowed, compared to only 80% of students who will feel so (Kaufman, 2015). University of Texas System Chancellor William McRaven was quoted as saying that the anxiety on campus may negatively affect faculty recruiting and finally lead to an increasing college budget (McGaughy, 2015).

Hypothesis. We thought it was reasonable to make the following hypothesis: most faculty members will disagree with the campus gun carry and faculty members may be more likely to be against campus carry than students.

Gun Carry for Females

Some campus gun carry supporters thought armed women could protect themselves from crime, especially sexual violence (Kaufman, 2015). However, according to a report, 48% of women in Texas demanded a stricter gun control law companed to only 40% of men in Texas who demanded a stricter gun control law (Public Opinion on Gun Control (2013). This is probably because women can hardly be benefited by gun carry. The number of murdered women tends to increase with the number of guns (Reindl & Cocco, 2015). Research has indicated that rape is more likely to occur in states with high gun ownership (Finley, 2015). Women are “300 times … more likely to be murdered with a handgun than to kill a stranger in self-defense” (830% if the criminal is an intimate partner) (Finley, 2015, para. 4). If there is a gun in the sexual violence scene, the victims are 500% more likely to be killed compared to a scene with no gun. Many gun control supporters believe women are not strong enough to carry a gun and therefore they should run if they are in crime situations (Hawkins, 2015).

Hypothesis. We thought it was reasonable to make the following hypothesis: women will be less likely to support campus gun carry compared to males. Women will be less likely to say they will carry guns on campus even though they are allowed to do so.

Other Hypotheses

We were also interested to find out some things that were not supported by sufficient previous research.

College Difference. Some colleges within our university may have more gun control supporters than others. On campus, it is a common suspicion that students in the College of Education will be more likely to be against campus gun carry compared to others, because they may think campus should be a safe place for children and college students. Gun control can also protect students in the College of Education from their future students, because even though their future students are too young to legally carry guns, some students might still be able to illegally reach guns from legal adult gun holders. On the contrary, there is a general perception that students in the College of Agriculture Sciences and Natural Resources and Jerry S. Rawls College of Business Administration are conservative people, who may be more likely support campus carry, especially for students in agriculture majors who might have grown up in the countryside where they may have learnt to protect themselves from dangerous wild animals. We would conform this perception in this research.

We thought it was reasonable to make the following hypothesis: students in the College of Education will be more likely to be against campus gun carry compared to others. Students in the College of Agriculture Sciences and Natural Resources and Jerry S. Rawls College of Business Administration may be more likely to support campus gun carry.

Panic for Campus Gun Carry Opponents. We suspected that one of the reasons for many opponents to be against campus gun carry was that they believed there would be many gun holders on campus after campus gun carry is allowed. They oppose campus gun carry because they do not want to set themselves in a place with many guns, which may make them panic or at least uncomfortable.

We thought it was reasonable to make the following hypothesis: those who do not agree with campus gun carry will generally estimate higher amounts of campus gun holders.

Methodology

Our research was designed to figure out our hypotheses made above. For the purpose of summarizing, our hypotheses for this research are as following:

1. Most TTU students will feel uncomfortable with classmates with guns and be against campus gun carry.

2. Most TTU faculty members will disagree with the campus gun carry and faculty members will be more likely to oppose campus carry than students.

3. Women will be less likely to support campus gun carry compared to males. Women will be less likely to say they will carry guns on campus even though they are allowed to do so.

4. Students in College of Agriculture Sciences and Natural Resources and Jerry S. Rawls College of Business Administration are more likely to support campus gun carry compared to students in other colleges.

5. People that do not agree with campus gun carry will generally estimate higher amounts of campus gun holders.

Survey Design

We made a survey which was designed to find the results regarding the hypotheses mentioned above. In our survey, we asked the survey participants their position on campus (undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and so on), gender, colleges, their feeling about others carrying guns on campus, whether they agreed with campus gun carry, whether campus gun carry could make campus safer, whether they would carry a gun on campus, and their estimation of gun carry rate.

Besides the survey questions regarding our major concerns, we also placed some other relative questions in the survey and tried to see if these questions could help us understand the public opinion about campus gun carry. For instance, we asked them whether gun carry should be forbidden in some specific area on campus and if taser carry could be a substitute for gun carry.

We reached an agreement before we made the survey. We decided to limit the survey participants to the TTU community. Each of us filled in a survey and obtained surveys from at least six males and six females. Surveys with a page blank were not included in our statistics, whereas surveys which missed less than 12 questions were included. We obtained 148 surveys at the end.

Microsoft Excel was used as the only statistics tool in this research. We tabulated the surveys we collected by a coding process. In the Excel sheet, a specific code denotes a correlated answer in the survey. For example, “1” in the Excel sheet denotes choice A in the survey and “2” refers to choice B. We used Excel to find out the distribution of the survey answers. In other words, we used Excel to count how many survey participants chose a specific answer for each question.

Results

Student Satisfaction

We suspected that most TTU students would feel uncomfortable with classmates with guns and be against campus gun carry.

Slightly more than half of students disagreed with the campus gun carry. The survey result indicated that 49% of the students, including graduate students, preferred their friends did not carry guns and 27% of them did not mind, while 24% of the students indicated that they had no feeling about this or did not answer the question (see Figure 1). When they found someone in the class was carrying a gun, 53% of them would feel nervous, in danger, or suspicious, whereas only 12% of them would feel even safer, and 25% of them did not think that would be a concern to them (see Figure 3). Most students (57%) believed concealed campus gun carry would make campus less safe overall (see Figure 5).

The survey result proved that our hypothesis about students’ opinions about campus gun carry was true. Slightly more than half of the students felt uncomfortable in a situation with guns, and they believed campus gun carry could not make campus safer.

Faculty Satisfaction

We made a hypothesis that most TTU faculty members would disagree with the campus gun carry, and faculty members would be more likely to oppose campus carry than students.

Similar to students, most faculty members disagreed with the campus gun carry. About half of the faculty would feel uncomfortable when their friends carried guns and a quarter of them did not mind this. However, if they found someone had a gun in the classroom, 88% of them would feel nervous, while 12% of them stated that it would not bother them (see Figure 4). Note that the percentage of classroom gun carry averse among faculty is much higher than that of students. 88% of the faculty also believed that the concealed campus gun carry would make campus less safe overall (see Figure 6).

The survey result proved that our hypothesis about faculty’s opinions toward campus gun carry was true. Most faculty members did not feel comfortable in a situation with guns, and they believed campus gun carry could not make campus safer. Moreover, the percentage of faculty against campus gun carry was higher than the percentage among students.

Female Gun Carry

We made a hypothesis that most women would be less likely to support campus gun carry compared to males and were less likely to say they would carry guns on campus, even though they were allowed to do so.

As expected, most women did not believe campus gun carry could benefit them. Women were less likely to say they would carry guns, even though they were allowed. 12% of the female survey participants indicated that they would carry guns if they were allowed to, compared to 27% of the male survey participants who would carry guns in the same case (see Figures 7 & 8).

In the same vein, the percentage of women who believed campus gun carry could make campus safer was less than the percentage among men. 31% of females believed campus gun carry could make campus safer, whereas 47% of men believed so (see Figures 9 & 10).

The survey result proved that our hypothesis about females’ opinions about campus gun carry was true.

College Difference

We suspected that students in the College of Agriculture Sciences and Natural Resources and Jerry S. Rawls College of Business Administration were more likely to support campus gun carry compared to students in other colleges. Students in the College of Education would be more likely to oppose campus gun carry.

Unfortunately, we did not collect sufficient surveys to support our hypothesis, because we had only 3 participants from each of College of Education and College of Agriculture Sciences and Natural Resources. Nevertheless, the survey result still provides weak support to our hypothesis. 66.67% and 61.54% of students in the College of Agriculture Sciences and Natural Resources and Jerry S. Rawls College of Business Administration believed campus gun carry could make campus safer, while only 33.33% of the students in the College of Education agreed with them (see Figure 11). Note that, among all the surveys we received, 39.19% of the survey participants indicated that they believed campus gun carry made campus less safe.

Other Finding about College Difference. Even though we obtained insufficient surveys to prove our hypothesis, we had a considerable number of surveys from several colleges. We obtained 43, 13, 42, and 16 surveys from the College of Arts & Sciences, Jerry S. Rawls College of Business Administration, Edward E. Whitacre Jr. College of Engineering, and the College of Visual & Performing Arts respectively. In general, students in Jerry S. Rawls College of Business Administration were more likely to agree with the campus gun carry. The percentage of survey participants who believed gun carry made campus safer for each of these colleges were 37.2%, 61.5%, 38.1%, and 25% respectively. Among these four colleges, the percentage of participants who believed gun carry made campus safer in Jerry S. Rawls College of Business Administration was significantly higher than others. The College of Visual & Performing Arts had the highest percentage of survey participants who believed gun carry made campus less safe. It is also interesting to find that 80% of the five survey participants in the College of Media & Communication stated that gun carry made campus less safe.

Panic for Campus Gun Carry Opponents

The last hypothesis we made was that people that did not agree with campus gun carry would generally estimate higher amounts of campus gun holders.

The survey result refuted our hypothesis. In general, campus gun carry opponents estimated a relatively lower number of guns on campus compared to supporters. As the matter of fact, 70.11% of campus gun carry averse participants believed the number of guns per thousand people on campus would be less than 100, whereas 58.62% of campus gun carry supporters, who believed campus gun carry could make campus safer, believed so (see Figure 12). Actually, almost half of the supporters (41.38%) believed the number of guns per thousand people may exceed 100.

Discussion

Student Satisfaction

We suspected that most TTU students would feel uncomfortable with classmates with guns and would be against campus gun carry. Our research results supported our hypothesis. Students did not want to set themselves in danger and believed campus gun carry would make campus more dangerous. They believed gun holders might be a hazard to the campus security and they might hardly reduce the likelihood and casualty of a mass shooting event.

Faculty Satisfaction

We thought that most TTU faculty members would disagree with the campus gun carry and faculty members would be more likely to oppose campus gun carry than students. Our research result supported our hypothesis. Similar to students, faculty would not like to be with students with weapons. They believed the campus gun carry actually would make their working environment dangerous. Impulsive students may shoot faculty in classrooms and offices. Faculty members may have been more likely to oppose campus gun carry than students, because they have to stay on campus longer than their students. Unlike students who can take class and leave campus, faculty members have to stay during office hours and they cannot refuse to meet students.

Female Gun Carry

We made a hypothesis that women would be less likely to support campus gun carry compared to males and were less likely to say they would carry guns on campus, even though they were allowed to do so. Females may not like guns or violence compared to males. Many of them may not have experience about gun shooting and may not effectively use guns to protect themselves. In emergency, females may not have enough time to shoot the criminals. The guns may be taken away by the criminals and become a tool for criminals to reach their objective. Moreover, they may feel it is not convenient to carry a gun every day for school. They may feel campus gun carry may enlarge the difference between males and females and make women’s situation even worse.

College Difference

We suspected that the students in College of Agriculture Sciences and Natural Resources and Jerry S. Rawls College of Business Administration would be more likely to support campus gun carry compared to the students in other colleges. The students in the College of Education would be more likely to oppose campus gun carry. The result supported our hypothesis, even though we did not collect enough surveys. Business and agriculture students supported gun carry because they were relatively more conservative than others. It seems that agriculture students know how dangerous the countryside is and how they should be armed to protect themselves.

Panic for Campus Gun Carry Opponents

The last hypothesis we made was that people who did not agree with campus gun carry would generally estimate higher amounts of campus gun holders. Our finding did not support our hypothesis. People who believed campus gun carry would make campus safer generally estimated relatively higher amounts of guns on campus. This may be because they believed that others would agree with them and think that obtaining a license and carrying guns on campus is worthwhile due to the security issue. Conversely, those who did not agree with gun carry on campus would think to carry a gun on campus was redundant and not worthwhile.

Limitation and Potential Future Study

In this research, we did not obtain sufficient number of surveys to support our hypotheses due to insufficient time and funding. Although our samples can well represent males’ and females’ opinions on the gun carry issue, we still did not obtain enough samples from faculty members and students in each college. Most of our samples were students in the College of Arts & Sciences, Jerry S. Rawls College of Business Administration, Edward E. Whitacre Jr. College of Engineering, and the College of Visual & Performing Arts.

The survey was well designed for the most part, but we could have put in one more question to ask survey participants whether they agreed with campus gun carry. In that case, we would not need to use the question whether the survey participants believe campus gun carry makes campus safer to speculate on their opinions about the gun carry issue. Also, we asked for the survey participants’ personal information, such as their genders and parties, in the beginning of the survey. This may have made the survey participants hide their real opinions in order to avoid others’ prejudice against their classifications. It might be more appropriate to put the personal information questions at the end of the survey instead.

If we can obtain sufficient funding for a future study, we will make improvements on these limitations and better reflect the TTU community’s opinions on campus gun carry.

Conclusion

According to the research result, most Texas Tech University community members do not believe campus gun carry can make campus safer. Also, most females may not be able to effectively utilize campus gun carry law to protect themselves.

The university and the State of Texas may need to reconsider the campus gun carry law and its impact on the university community. A comprehensive study of campus gun carry funded by the university and the State of Texas may be demanded for future further studies.

References

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Atkins, S. (2013, Jan. 19). Survey from students: no guns on campus. RVA News. Retrieved on September 10, 2015 from http://rvanews.com/news/survey-from-students-no-guns-on-campus/81614

Brawer, M. (2015, Sep. 15). Why guns on campus are such a dangerous idea. Miami Herald. Retrieved on September 30, 2015 from http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article35371278.html

Cattanach, J. (2015, August 18). Why I’ll soon have reason to fear my students. The Dallas Morning News. Retrieved on September 8, 2015 from
http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/latest-columns/20150818-joanna-cattanach-why-ill-soon-have-reason-to-fear-my-students.ece

Clark, D. (2015, July 28). Cautious optimism as the struggle with campus carry begins. The Daily Texan. Retrieved on September 10, 2015 from http://www.dailytexanonline.com/2015/07/28/cautious-optimism-as-the-struggle-with-campus-carry-begins

Ferner, M. (2012, December 17). Gun violence In Colorado: From Columbine to Aurora, mass shootings reignite gun law debate. The Huffington Post. Retrieved on September 10, 2015 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/17/gun-violence-in-colorado-_n_2316633.html

Finley, L. (2015, Sep. 22). Commentary: Guns won’t stop campus rape. Courier-Post. Retrieved on September 30, 2015 from http://www.courierpostonline.com/story/opinion/columnists/2015/09/22/commentary-guns-stop-campus-rape/72593320/

Hawkins, A. (2015, August 25). Gun control proponent: Women too weak to carry guns for self-defense. Breitbart. Retrieved on September 1, 2015 from http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/08/25/vasgun-control-proponent-women-not-strong-enough-to-carry-guns-on-campus/

Kaufman, N. (2015, September 8). Concealed carry on colleges campuses: What could possibly go wrong? Huff Post. Retrieved on September 8, 2015 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-kaufman/concealed-carry-on-colleg_b_8093306.html

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McGaughy, L. (2015, May 25). McRaven: Campus carry could hurt faculty recruiting, increase costs. Chron. Retrieved on September 24, 2015 from http://www.chron.com/news/politics/texas/article/McRaven-Campus-carry-could-hurt-faculty-6285105.php

Michael, K. (2015, August 30). Texas tech to have guidelines for campus carry by Oct. 1. Lubbock Online. Retrieved on September 1, 2015 from http://lubbockonline.com/filed-online/2015-08-30/texas-tech-have-guidelines-campus-carry-oct-1#.VebGXfn0F4d

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Welch, M. (2015, May 22). The truth about campus carry. TribTalk, Perspective on Texas. Retrieved on September 8, 2015 from http://www.tribtalk.org/2015/05/22/the-truth-about-campus-carry/

Welsh, T. (2012, July 20). Should the Colorado theater shooting spur more gun control? U.S. News. Retrieved on September 8, 2015 from http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2012/07/20/should-the-colorado-theater-shooting-spur-more-gun-control


Appendix A

Figures


Figure1 Students' Opinion about Friends' Gun Carry







Figure 2 Faculty's Opinions about Friends' Gun Carry








Figure 3 Students' Feelings about Classmate Gun Carry







Figure 4 Faculty's Feelings about Classmate Gun Carry








Figure 5 Will Gun Carry Make Campus Safer? (Students)









Figure 6 Will Gun Carry Make Campus Safer? (Faculty)








Figure 7 Will You Carry a Gun if Allowed? (Male)





Figure 8 Will You Carry a Gun if Allowed? (Female)






Figure 9 Will Gun Carry Make Campus Safer? (Male)





Figure 10 Will Gun Carry Make Campus Safer? (Female)






Figure 11 Expectation of Number of Guns per Thousand People by Perception Whether Gun Carry Make Campus Safer








Ex. 36.8% of those whom believe gun carry makes campus less safe expect that 0 – 50 guns per thousand people.


Figure 12 Perception about Campus Gun Carry by Colleges