Frontline Support for Concealed Carry on Campus: A Case Study in a Border Town
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Frontline Support for Concealed Carry on Campus: A Case Study in a Border Town Fei Luo 1
& Wanzhu
Shi 1
Received: 5 May 2020 / Accepted: 27 August 2020/ # Southern Criminal Justice Association 2020
Abstract An increasing number of states have passed legislation allowing individuals to carry concealed weapons on university campuses. Past research has examined the perceptions of campus carry among college students, but most of the extant literature represents efforts occurring prior to these legislative changes and seldom explores the perceptions of minority populations. Current scholarship also lacks research on how faculty, staff, and administrators perceive campus carry policies. This study investigates all campus stakeholders’ knowledge of the campus carry policy and their support for it in a university located in a U.S.-Mexico border town. Results from the structural equation modeling indicate that campus members have limited knowledge of the campus carry policy and expressed low support for the policy. Assimilation of Hispanics significantly impacted their support for concealed carry on campus both directly and indirectly. Keywords Concealed carry . Campus safety . Assimilation . Hispanics
Introduction On February 14, 2018, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida became the site of a horrifying shooting, perpetrated by a 19-year-old gunman. At the end of this massacre, 17 people were dead, and 17 others were injured. While the victims’ families mourned their losses, the nation was once again bogged down in the debate of whether the country should allow private citizens to carry concealed
* Fei Luo [email protected] Wanzhu Shi [email protected]
1
Department of Social Sciences, Texas A&M International University, 5201 University Blvd, Laredo, TX, USA
American Journal of Criminal Justice
handguns on campus. Supporters of campus carry claimed that enabling faculty and staff members to use weapons for self-defense can better deter lethal violence on campus (Thompson, Price, Dake, & Teeple, 2013). Conversely, opponents of the policy argued that allowing more guns on campus would potentially increase the number of accidental shootings, student suicides, and mass shootings (Fallahi, Austad, Fallon, & Leishman, 2009; Thompson et al., 2013). With campus safety at the forefront of public discourse, a growing number of states have enacted bills allowing concealed weapons on campus (De Angelis, Benz, & Gillham, 2017). Despite increasing attention from the public on this heated issue, there remains limited information about how students, faculty, staff, and school administrators perceive concealed carry laws on campus. Most empirical research has focused on public attitudes toward concealed carry on campuses, while few have studied the public’s actual knowledge level about the campus policies. Scholars have indicated that political knowledge among the public has a great impact on their attitudes towards specific issues and influences the development of the policies (Galston, 2001; Kahne & Spor
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