Dear Editor,
Thanks for your timely and balanced coverage of current gun law debates. I’m writing in response to your survey results on Sen. Birdwell’s proposed concealed carry bill that would allow licensed carriers to bring firearms onto college campuses. It is often the case with “opt-in” surveys that those who respond are often those who have the strongest feelings, one way or another. I suspect that was the case among the 92 respondents to your recent survey. For what it’s worth, your publishing of this survey and accompanying recent articles and opinion pieces has lined up perfectly with discussion of gun rights and the Second Amendment in my PSC 2302 class (thanks!). Today I polled, almost verbatim, the same question you polled about the ability to carry concealed weapons on campus. Since my class is not a completely random sample, it might not be a perfect sample. Nevertheless, my class does enroll 250 Baylor students from majors all across the university and is, for the most part, representative of the Baylor student body along gender, racial, and ethnic lines. 220 students responded the survey question. 66% opposed allowing concealed weapons on Baylor’s campus. 25% were in favor. 9% were unsure. Since these results were vastly different from your published survey results, I thought they were worth sharing.
Thanks for all your good work.
Best,
Andy Hogue
Department of Political Science
