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,
GUN
CONTROL
There are many of issues that we
contend with in our daily lives. One of
these problems is carrying guns on campus.
The main issue this paper wants to discuss is that Texas Tech University will permit people to carry handguns on
campus, and this will be in effect starting September 1, 2016, as a result of the
new state gun legislation. The
university will have some guidelines to control the use of handgun license
holders (CHL) on campus by Oct. 1, 2015 (Michael, 2015).
Plenty of controversies will arise
with the adoption of this legislation among students, faculty, and staff. Some will accept the law because they will be
happy to carry their guns wherever they are, including on campus, as it makes
them feel safer than when they do not have their pistol on them. Others, on the other hand, oppose this point
of view and are strict.
Some people feel
safe when others have guns on them while others are horrified by the mere idea.
A very important side of this issue is how do families, who
send their sons and daughters to colleges, feel about this new legislation and
universities’, adoption of it? Will the
majority be in support of, or against, this new law? How does it make them feel as they send their
loved ones to campus? According to the response
of Barrett, who is one of the members in Florida
state, the campus is the safest place in the nation, and it would not
make sense to change it by allowing law-abiding citizens to carry guns for
defense (Hawkins, 2015). On the other
hand, people who live in households in which guns are common may have a higher
inclination to allow their children to carry guns on campus.
Responses to this law also are different between male and
female, between students and faculty, and between American citizens or international
students. Similarly, the position on
this law is different from undergraduate students and graduate students, and
between people who hold Democratic views and those who are Republican. How will carrying guns affect different
people’s lives? Will many choose to
carry these guns for self-defense or not?
Opponents of campus carry argued that it is also difficult to
assess the mental and psychological health of each and every person who has a
gun license. For this reason, it is
potentially dangerous to allow this law to be put into effect, as some could
harm others when faced with certain situations. There are other alternative ways to defend
ourselves, such as pepper spray, Taser, etc., instead of using fatal fire
pistols. An increase in guns in the population leads to an increase in gun
crimes, rather than a decrease.
Many businesses responded already addressing their position
from an open carry policy inside their facilities. For example, Mooney (2015) mentions Whataburger CEO’s response to The New York Times;
Carrying guns is not allowed inside any locations for Whataburger around the
state, even if carrying weapons is allowed in different places such as educational institutes and on campus. Businesses will have to post a sign in their
locations if they are banning open carry in their locations; starting January
2016, they will be required to hold two signs.
The controversy created by this new Texas
law will just grow over time; most recently, University of Texas professors
announced that they would consider a suit law to ban open carry on campuses. Current
law allows the university presidents to ban the open carry in selective locations
on campus but not all (Eger, 2015, para.1).
Goodacre (2015) interviews Texas officers,
and reports different positions; some of them think that the open carry policy
will not make much difference, as in general many Texans already have guns
licensed for hunting or self-protection in rural areas in particular. Others
said that they have concerns about the safety of the carriers even more than of
non-carriers. Alex Azar, a covered handgun license instructor, and owner of
Longview hidden Handgun Licensing and Training is quoted as saying he had a significant increase in clients asking for
training in the last two months.
In this paper, I use a questionnaire method to collect views
on the new state gun control law and its consequences as it legally allows for
carrying fire pistols on campus. The paper goes as follows; I offer a summary
of literature and media articles available and covering this issue, followed by
hypotheses and the method used to investigate them; I then offer the results
based on the conducted questionnaire, followed by a discussion of those
results, and finally the last section offers the conclusion.
Literature Review
People with different political positions
are expected to have different standings towards the open carry policy.
Democrats and Republicans are known to have conflicting positions on this
particular legislation. According to
Sen. Rodney Ellis, who is a Democrat, this law will increase more forces
instead of the opposite (Mooney, 2015). However,
Sen. Craig Estes, who is a Republican, has a strong faith that people who carry
guns are dependable about their guns. Gov.
Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, requires strong
policy about this new law. Even Mary Jones, a reporter for the New York Times,
agrees when she wrote, “We do not need to carry guns in places that are full of
children, we are not in the Wild, Wild West” (Mooney, 2015, para. 9). According to Texas politics, Texas
political culture and ideology is the combination of classical liberalism,
social conservatism and populism, ideologies found in Republican views (Texas
Politics, 2015). Hence, I form the first hypothesis as:
Hypothesis
1: Texans are more likely to say they
will carry guns, because Texas is primarily a Republican state, and most
Republicans are pro-guns.
According to Moreno, “Faculty members were
predominant throughout the meetings and their main concern was almost unanimous—no
guns in the classroom” (Moreno, 2015, para. 5).
Patrick Timmons, a political science professor,
said that he often feels unsafe when he discusses controversial topics, because
some students do not agree with his opinions.
Therefore, he said he would feel unsafe if these students had guns
(Moreno, 2015).
160 professors from the University of Texas signed a petition declaring
that they would not allow students with handguns in their classrooms (Schallhorn,
2015). Like Timmons,
Dr. Joan Neuberger, a history professor at UT
Austin, fears that debating controversial issues will no longer be possible
because opposing views may be met with violence from those who have guns (Schallhorn,
2015). According to McGaughy,
professors from UT Austin have formed the largest group in the nation against
guns on campus, and want the university president to ban guns in classrooms and
other places on campus (McGaughy, 2015). Scanlon, who signed a petition in UT that she
is a graduate student in the school of social work and she feels unsafe for her
and other students on campus about this law, is quoted as saying, “Please stop
helping people carry weapons” (Shallhorn, 2015, para. 20). Based on this discussion the second
hypothesis is:
Hypothesis
2: Faculty and staff will be generally against the open carry policy on campus.
Women carry guns,
not just for protecting themselves, but also it is their right as American
citizens. There is a woman from rural Idaho,
who was shot by mistake by her two year-old son
because she had an armed handgun in her purse.
This happened not because she was careless but because of the
carelessness of the culture to allow guns in the first place (Rosenwald, 2015). Jenna Conwisar said, "As strong, intelligent, college educated
women, we will not be provoked by fear or ignorance into endorsing
unconscionable politics. And out of respect to our professors, faculty, and
community, we should preserve the sanctity of a secure learning environment in
a way that allows people to feel comfortable and safe. Let’s stand up for
safety and get guns off our campus" (Conwisar, 2015, para. 9). Mariana
Prieto, a public relation major in University of Texas in El Paso, said, “Right
now we are against guns on every campus and it does not work, we still have
shootings, so why do you think more gun control would work?” (Moreno, 2015,
para. 10). Scanlon, who signed a petition in UT and were a graduate
student in the school of social work and she felt unsafe for herself and other
students on campus about this law, is quoted as saying: “Please stop helping
people carry weapons”(Shallhorn, 2015, para. 20). Based on this discussion the third hypothesis
is:
Hypothesis 3: Women
are less likely to support the campus carry law than men.
According to Butski, “A major benefit of Taser use was a
decrease in lethal force deaths” (Butski, 2004, p. 2). Butski argued that more lives are saved as a
result of using Tasers rather than guns.
There are other self-defense methods rather than guns such as mace. According to DeVoe, a particular brand of
pepper spray would be able to work from up to 10 feet away, and could squirt 25
short times before running out (DeVoe, 2015).
According to Mayer, students at Oklahoma University are allowed to have
Tasers and mace as weapons for self-defense instead of using guns (Mayer,
2015). According to Lamb, who is a
student in Oklahoma University said, he understands why people need to carry a
defense with them on campus because the lack of the security. Lamb said, it is common to listen to female
when they talked about if they had an emergency situation, especially in the late
night. Most girls prefer to ask someone
else of their friends for dropping house or walk with a partner on campus or at
late night. (Mayer, 2015). According to advertising freshman Anna Linn said: “I guess I don’t really carry it around a lot, but sometimes,
really late at night, I do”. She said
that she carries both mace and a Taser gun with her, and she had a friend who borrows
her mace before (Mayer, 2015, para. 8).
Based on this discussion the fourth hypothesis is:
Hypothesis 4: Carrying
of guns on campus is not necessary because there are other forms of
self-defense that can be used.
Most professors will not allow their students to have guns in
their classroom even if students have permits.
In spite of the new law of allowing permit holders to carry guns on
campus, there are more than one hundred and
sixty professors have signed a petition that refuses to allow guns in
classrooms. Furthermore, these professors
list their names in a Google document list to show their objection to the law
that was signed by Governor Greg Abbott (R) in June. Dr. Neuberger said that
people reaction would be confused if they know there are other students with
guns in the classroom. Moreover, this
issue will be debatable and controversial (Schallhorn, 2015). Based on this discussion the fifth
hypothesis is:
Hypothesis 5: Students believe that a classroom is an
inappropriate place for open carry.
Method
We were looking for specific data
about people who prefer to carry guns or not on campus. So I did a survey with
my classmates and during the discussion; we prepared a set of questions that
addresses the open carry policy and the consequences of its implementation on
campus discussed. We consulted with our instructor about the appropriateness of
the survey and then we collected responses, obtained 148 responses in total. Our sample included participants of both
genders, both International and American nationalities, faculties and students,
and for the students we included graduate and undergraduate students. They were asked about their backgrounds and
whether they were raised seeing guns. Our class has been subdivided into groups
with different tasks. The first group’s task was to investigate the relation
between attitude towards guns and being addicted to smoking. Another group’s task was to distribute the
survey and to collect responses from different departments at TTU.
We excluded the responses where
students did not complete all of the questions.
We chose dichotomous questions.
We chose the questions that related to the hypotheses.
The survey included questions; we
needed to know how did they identify themselves politically, by asking which
party did you identify with? To answer
the question, we provided the following options: Republican, Democrat, other, or
independent/NA. I asked them about which
places should not be allowed guns in. Responses
included places such as any place on campus, daycares, schools, workshops, etc.
and generally in crowded regions where there are a lot of people of different
ages including children. Also, we asked
them about which places they felt it was appropriate to allow guns to be
carried. The answers varied between
classroom, dormitory, student centers, none, faculty offices, recreation centers,
and dorm cafeteria.
To investigate the second
hypothesis, we asked people about whether the women would be safer if they
carried guns? And we received diverse answers.
For the question about whether you let your family members carry guns on
campus, their answer was between Yes and no.
Another question was in the case of a mass shooting; Did carrying gun
make us safer? There were different
percentages between yes and no answers, a few participants did not answer in
some cases. They probably did not like
the question, or they did not feel comfortable.
To address the third hypothesis; we asked the following question, did you think a Taser could be a substitute for allowing gun
carry on campus? Another follow-up
question was which of the following weapons such as a gun, mace, or Taser was
best?
Because guns are dangerous, I
disagree with carrying guns on campus.
However, I would like to know as much information as possible about
people who agreed to carry guns on campus and about people who did not.
Moreover, I would like to know the percentage of people on TTU campus who
supported it, and if they would change their opinion after this study.
Results
After we had collected the data for
the survey for carrying guns on campus, we compiled the results and then we
investigated our hypothesis. 88 respondents
(which is 60%) were from Texas, 33 (22%) participants were from other US
states. 27 (18%) participants were
international.
I suspected originally is that
people who were Republican were more likely to carry guns, and therefore, the
first hypothesis suggests that Texans, being dominantly Republicans, would be
pro open carry policy. Our results showed
that of those who participated, 76% of Republicans said yes for carrying guns. On
the other hand, 24% of Republicans opposed the campus carry law.
In the second hypothesis, I was
interested in the faculty and staff’s position against the open carry. 79% of
faculty participants said that they would be more nervous in general, 14% of
them said that it did not bother them, and 7% said that they felt safe with
campus carry.
In my third hypothesis, I was
interested in knowing whether women were be safe if they carried guns. I predicted that women would not be safer if
they carried guns, and I was wrong. 55% of people said yes and agreed that
women would be safer if they had guns on them.
Only 44% disagreed, and 1% were not sure. However, a majority of female respondents did
not think that carrying guns on campus would make it safer (65%) and 31%
thought that campus carry would make the campus safer. 4% did not respond.
As for the argument that guns are
necessary for self-defense purposes, I looked at responses in favor for a
particular self-defense method, as there are other ways of self-defense, which
can be used instead of guns to investigate my fifth hypothesis. In the survey, we asked participants whether
a Taser could be a substitute for guns on campus? 71% of respondents agreed that Tasers could
be a substitute while 28% disagreed.
In my last hypothesis, I suspected
that there were some places on campus that would be inappropriate for carrying
guns. In this survey, we asked
respondents that places they felt it was appropriate to allow guns to be
carried on campus. 24% said faculty
offices, 15% classrooms, 14% said dormitories, 13% said recreation center, 12%
said the student center and 10% said the dorm cafeteria. However, 12% responded that none of these
places should allow guns.
Discussion
The result of our study showed that
various percentages of males and females responded about the carrying of guns
on campus. That would be a fair survey
since we had a good percentage of both genders and different opinions from
them. We found in this survey is a few
people, both males and females, would not mind if Texas Tech allowed the campus
carry law. From what we got from the
results, we found that they would feel safer if they were armed. But they would not trust other people around
them who were armed as well. Also, it was easy to attain one; anyone could buy
a gun from any store without a difficult process. This made it very easy to carry a firearm
legally. However, more than half the
percentage of males and females would not like to carry a gun on campus, even
if it was allowed. We obtained from the
result section that these people were not comfortable with the idea of having
guns in their daily lives or classes. They did not think most people needed to
have guns. Most students and faculties knew that the campus was safe and had good
security, so they would not need to carry a weapon themselves. Also, they did not want to make the
arrangements to get one.
Our respondents were either from
Lubbock, a small town, people who grew up on a farm, people who were from a
large city, people who were from the suburbs, or people who grew up in many
places. This allowed our survey to have
different opinions on various areas. We found data about people who grew up in
a home with guns. We got very close to
having equal halves of participants who had grown up seeing guns and people who
had not. We found from this data that
people who grew up with guns were more likely to carry guns on campus. But people who did not rise with guns were
more likely to avoid carrying guns.
Also, we found from this data that less than half of the percentage of
people said that concealed gun carry permission would make the campus safer. On the other hand, the rest of the people
were against concealed gun carry. From those results, it could be shown that it
would not be fair for people on campus if someone was carrying a gun and other
people would not know. Sometimes this could create dangerous and bad situations
for students and faculty.
There was more data about students'
feelings if a classmate was carrying a gun.
Some people said they would feel safe, some stated it would not bother
them, some were neutral about the subject, but the majority would feel in
danger and nervous if a classmate was allowed to carry a gun. We obtained from
their responses that most students would not be comfortable or relax when other
classmates had guns. This would in turn keep them from paying full attention in
class.
From my first hypothesis, I thought
that Republicans were more likely to support the new law. In fact, from the data that we had, they were
more likely to carry a gun, since three-quarters of Republicans surveyed said
they would carry a gun if it were allowed.
They were not more likely to support the CCL. Another hypothesis that I
was interested in was if faculty and staff would be more comfortable with the
campus carry law. However, from the data
that we found, they said that they would be more nervous in general. We found
that three-quarters of faculty and staff would be more nervous. We observed that faculty were more opposed to
the gun law; it could be due to the following reasons. First of all, they spend most of their time
at the university finishing their work.
Secondly, they could have angry students due to low grades. Because of
this, faculties are much more opposed to the campus carry law. Moreover, some students hate their professors
just because they did not like their class or lessons, and knowing a student in
their classroom has a gun could make the faculty more nervous.
For another hypothesis, how women feel
about saving when they carry guns. From
the data that we found, women did say they would feel safer if they carried
guns. More than half the people polled
believed women would be safer if allowed to carry guns. Yes, we know that women
would be safer if they were armed, but, on the other hand, women would not be
safe if others were allowed to have guns, as well. In this case, most people would be in danger
since all people would have guns.
Another hypothesis that I had been
that people would say that a Taser could be used for self-defense better than
guns on campus. Indeed, from the data
that we found, they did say a Taser could be a substitute for guns on
campus. Three quarters of respondents
agreed that Tasers could be a substitute, while less than half disagreed. I thought that the campus-carry law would
make people comfortable with guns anywhere on campus. However, from the data that we had, most
people said that there are specific places that should not allow the carrying
of guns.
The data on places that people
agreed should not allow guns were faculty offices, classrooms, dormitories,
recreation center, the student center, and the dorm cafeteria. However, a few people responded that none of
these places should allow guns. We found from the data that most places that
people did not want to allow carrying guns were places that have a large number
of people, such as on campus, in dorms, gyms, hospitals, churches, and any
public areas. These places are for all
people to have fun with their families, and they would like to be safe. For the dorm area, it is a home, and everyone
would like to live in a safe environment.
For the recreation area, this is a place for people who would like to be
doing their exercise and have fun with their friends. There are a lot of people who do not want to
be hurt in these crowded areas.
One of the limitations of this
study was that we did not have enough data on the views in each
department. We can improve on this study
by making it for each department. This
will help us to find out the views of students who are from sciences and art majors. Another limitation of our study was that the
religion of the respondents was not taken into consideration. This would be useful in finding out whether
views are different across different religions.
Another limitation was that the study was conducted on only one
campus. In the future, we will do other
studies for different campuses in Texas.
This will make our study valid for the whole state of Texas.
In conclusion, we recommend that
TTU considers our paper for a position against campus carry law as we survey different
opinions. TTU campus should think
carefully before allowing students to have guns. We learned from this paper that carrying guns
on campus would increase the number of victims instead of decrease it. Since there are people who have different
mentalities and multiple personality disorders, which should not be trusted
with guns, and permit laws can not necessarily identify them. The interesting thought is that most students
from this study would like to be armed but not other people around them, which of
course will not because the law will be applying for all people not to a certain
group. Finally, we got the data from this survey, and we are thankful for all
people opinion’s that helped us to present these surveys.
References
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