CalebHall_INTS3300_FinalResearch

Running Head: CAMPUS CARRY 1
Campus Carry: An Interdisciplinary Study
Caleb Hall
INTS 3300-D02
Dr. Gail Bentley
Texas Tech University

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Abstract
This paper studies the upcoming implementation of campus carry in Texas. Literature was
chosen based on its timeliness (how recently it was published) and its scholarly nature. Literature
from the discipline of engineering focused on the personalization of handguns and used the
scientific method and quantitative research methods, while law focused on legal precedents
leading up to campus carry and other such legal considerations and thus were either law reviews
or used qualitative research methods. Conclusions reached were that both disciplines can play a
role in determining the success of campus carry and that, while there is still much to learn, each
one contributes to a greater understanding of the dynamics surrounding campus carry.

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This is a research project using Repko’s 10 STEP process concerning the issues
surrounding the upcoming implementation of campus carry on public university campuses in the
state of Texas. This research focuses on the disciplines of engineering and law in order to show:
1. how campus carry came about and what sparked its advent; 2. how scientists and engineers
are working to make guns safer, not only for their presence on college campuses, but also for
their presence in communities as a whole; and 3. what some of the legal considerations are
concerning this phenomenon. This paper then identifies and resolves conflicts existing both
within and between the disciplines and uses all 10 STEPS to create a more comprehensive and
interdisciplinary understanding of the issues surrounding campus carry.
STEP 1: State the Focus of Your Paper
On August 1, 2016, Texas State Bill SB 11 will go into effect. This bill is an amendment
to the Texas Penal Code and, when activated, will allow CHL (concealed handgun license)
carriers to have in their possession a loaded, concealed, firearm while in university buildings.
This will for a year only apply to all public 4-year institutions; all other public college campuses
will be covered beginning a year later (The Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus & The
Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, n.d.). With this bill’s enactment, campus security has once again
been pushed to the forefront of the public conscience at a time when, seemingly, school and
workplace violence, especially with firearms, is becoming the norm instead of the exception.
Thus there exists a need to understand what effect this bill along with the easing of gun
restrictions will have. Two disciplines worthy of inclusion in the discussion are law and
engineering. By focusing one’s attention here, one can understand how Supreme Court
precedent has formally extended the right to possess firearms to private citizens, and now college

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campuses, and how technology can be used effectively to ensure adequate safety of the campus
community.
STEP 2: Justify Using an Interdisciplinary Approach
Campus carry is not an issue with a single scope or comprehensive perspective which has
the answers to how this will ultimately affect college campuses in the state of Texas. This makes
campus carry a complex issue since, as Repko (2012) points out, it can be addressed by multiple
disciplines and their perspectives (p. 86). This also is a relatively new, “unresolved” societal
issue that must be handled (Repko, 2012, p. 86). It is in fact gaining momentum. Thus, the issue
of campus carry is one that strongly warrants interdisciplinary research.
STEP 3: Identify Relevant Disciplines
Since campus carry has been identified as a complex issue, thus warranting
interdisciplinary research, the next step to creating a more comprehensive understanding is to
identify disciplines which could have potentially valid points to add to the discussion. As Repko
(2012) notes, potentially relevant disciplines are those “whose research domain includes at least
one phenomenon involved in the question…at hand, whether or not its community of scholars
has recognized the problem and published its research” (pg. 144). By this definition, then, there
are many disciplines which have potential relevance to better understanding campus carry and
any dynamic which may be associated with it. Constitutional and criminal law must be studied in
order to ensure that whatever extra security measures are adopted by campuses to offset the
increased risk of violence are legal and do not intrude into students’ personal liberties.
Economics and finance can be used to determine what effect this will have on university budgets
as they try to adopt extra security measures. Psychology and human development can also be
used to study the mental makeup of young adults to determine to what extent young adults are

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more likely to engage in violence since the enactment of campus carry will legally allow students
to possess firearms on campus, something that before now has not been seen. There are many
others that could be useful in creating a better understanding of campus carry.
For this particular research project, however, only two will be used: law/legal studies and
engineering/technology. Law and legal studies are being used since the issue of campus carry is a
direct result of the Supreme Court’s legal precedent that the Second Amendment, the right to
keep and bear arms, is indeed a fundamental American liberty held by private American citizens.
Thus, this right should be extended to college campuses as well, some people feel. Engineering
and technological concerns are being studied in order to determine what innovations can and are
being developed in order to make guns safer to handle in the general public. Since campus
culture sometimes follows a “less-than-legal pattern” of behavior, an understanding of
innovations in safety technology should be had in order to understand whether or not guns can be
manufactured to have a greater amount of safety within their design, essentially offsetting or, at
the very least, greatly diminishing any increased risk for potentially deadly behavior.
STEP 4: Conduct a Literature Search
After identifying disciplines relevant to the topic at hand, one must conduct a literature
search, the gathering of scholarly information concerning the given topic (Repko, 2012, pg. 167).
This is done for several reasons, including the discovery of scholarly information produced by
individual disciplines concerning the topic at hand; the development of adequacy in the relevant
disciplines; and the verification that the identified disciplines truly are relevant (Repko, 2012, pg.
168-170). In the case of this research concerning campus carry, the respective literature searches
concerning legal studies and engineering have indeed produced a great amount of useful
knowledge.

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For law, the utility is that it shows how campus carry has come to be the issue that it
currently is. The movement toward opening campuses up to concealed carry was initiated in
response to the April 2007 massacre that occurred on the campus of Virginia Tech University at
the hands of a lone assailant (Kopel, 2009, pg. 522-523). In the immediate aftermath, students
began organizing against the prohibition of firearms from campuses and formed activist
organizations and participated in mass protests against the standing laws (Kopel, 2009, pg. 522).
The movement was spurred on by government agents attempting to pass laws prohibiting the
exclusion of weapons from campuses (Kopel, pg. 523-525) and also by the Supreme Court ruling
that the Second Amendment does indeed give private American citizens the right to “keep and
bear arms” as the Constitution puts it (Miller, 2011, pg. 242). Additionally, a study of the law
shows that there are no laws regulating the design of guns (Vernick and Teret, 2000, pg. 1196
thus no specific safety features are required, and also that body scanners (or other similar
devices) used to detect security threats are on a tight rope between security and intrusion into
one’s privacy (Abeyratne, 2010, pg. 75-76).
Engineering has value in showcasing the technology being developed to the end of
making guns safer. As of right now, scientists are developing technology such as biometric
identification to make guns personalized and responsive only to a single or a certain number of
preprogrammed operators. Chen & Recce (2007) point out that the most effective biometric
marker to this end is handgrip pattern recognition since it is a learned behavior and predictable
over time (Introduction section, paragraph 6). Furthermore, when combined with an image of the
shape of one’s hand, there is very little chance that personalized guns will allow unauthorized
shooters to utilize them (Shang & Velduis, 2008, Introduction section, paragraph 4), thus
preserving the quality of the gun’s safety mechanisms.

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STEP 5: Develop Adequacy in Each Relevant Discipline
Since the interdisciplinary research process focuses on creating new insights by drawing
on different, existing disciplinary insights and integrating them with one another (Repko, 2012,
pg. 20), it is necessary for one to develop what Repko (2012) terms “adequacy” in each of those
individual disciplines, that is, “…knowing enough about the discipline to have a basic
understanding of how it approaches, as well as illuminates and characterizes, the problem” (pg.
193). This is achieved by creating a baseline understanding about the discipline so as to
determine which of its parts is the most applicable to the problem at hand; identifying, critiquing,
and understanding relevant theories and research methods; and by providing in-text proof of a
proper level of adequacy (pg. 193). It is, as Repko (2012) points out, “essential preparation” for
the research project (pg. 193).
One discipline relevant to creating an interdisciplinary understanding of how campus
carry can be made a safer prospect even in the midst of heightened societal violence is
engineering and technology. This discipline focuses on determining how science can be used to
create and modify technology with the end result in mind of harnessing it to make life safer and
more productive for all. In this case, the question is how can guns, and possibly the campus
community as a whole, be made safer even in the midst of a possible addition of firearms into the
campus culture? One of the working theories is that guns can be personalized with biometric
technology that can be programmed to recognize only certain users, thereby working only for
certain people. This is based on the theory that each human individual has a unique, singular
genetic makeup, of which would be the key to making the firearm in question function properly.
Because this kind of technology falls into biomechanics and electronics, the overarching
perspective is found in the natural sciences since it is part of the observable physical world. The

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method employed is the scientific method since to invent this technology it was observed that: 1.
Each person has a unique biological makeup; 2. This could be used to “personalize” a weapon
(the hypothesis); and 3. It was tested to see if it could be done so (Repko, 2012, pg. 131). Thus,
the research method emphasized is quantitative in nature since the findings were determined in
controlled experiments (Repko, 2012, pg. 206).
The second discipline relevant to understanding campus carry is law. This discipline has
much to say concerning legal rulings that have played a part in helping to make campus carry
even a remote possibility. In short, campus carry is a result of the legal precedent that individual
American citizens do indeed have the right to carry firearms as a result of the Second
Amendment. This is the case even though guns are currently unregulated by federal law,
something that as of right now is extremely rare since many other consumer products, most of
them in fact, are under federal guidelines concerning, at the very least, their manufacture and
sale. Federal guidelines are also ambiguous in terms of keeping track of people with firearms as
this is seen in most instances as an invasion of privacy. This is prohibited by the Fourth
Amendment under the umbrella of unwarranted searches and seizures.
Since law focuses heavily on interpretation and legal precedent, the overarching
perspective can be found in the humanities since it seeks to answer if there exist laws on certain
phenomena and what legal precedent has already been established concerning it. The research
method most often employed, at least for this research, was the law review since much was
found concerning legal precedent. It also lent itself to qualitative methods since they refer to
meanings, definitions, and words (Repko, 2012, pg. 208), all of which legal scholars use greatly.
STEP 6: Analyze the Problem and Evaluate Each Insight or Theory

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After developing adequacy in the disciplines that are relevant to a better understanding of
the campus carry issue, we must now, as Repko (2012), states, “Analyze the problem from the
perspective of each relevant discipline in a general sense, and…evaluate each insight and/or
theory” (pg. 225). This allows for one to see how each discipline’s lens views the problem and
then compare them with one another and dive deeper into how their respective insights are both
strong and limited in their understanding of the problem. This is accomplished by going from the
general (each discipline’s respective perspective) to the specific (what disciplinary insights
contribute to one’s understanding of the issue) (Repko, 2012, pg. 225).
Engineering
Since engineering is primarily concerned with how science and technology can be used to
enhance one’s quality of life, it makes sense that it should be one of the disciplines used to study
campus carry since advances in gun safety technology are currently being studied and/.or
developed. With the likelihood being that firearms will soon be a part of the campus culture of
Texas’ public universities, the need is there for firearms to have more effective safety
mechanisms than a simple trigger lock in order to better ensure that they are not used by the
wrong people against innocent civilians in a violent, criminal kind of way. The need is also there
for campus security to be able to monitor effectively the presence itself of firearms and how
many there may be on campus. Engineering can help determine the most effective technologies
at accomplishing these tasks and is why it is one of the disciplines used to study the problem at
hand.
As Chen and Recce (2007) note, there have been numerous technologies proposed for
making guns safer, smarter, and more difficult for unauthorized users to operate. These have
included electronic forms such as rings having an embedded radio transmitter which would

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unlock a firearm by sending radio waves to a receiver within the gun itself and also a PIN-
method used in much the same way that one accesses their bank account (Introduction section,
paragraph 3). These, according to Chen and Recce (2007), are inadequate at making guns safer
since the technology can be misappropriated or forgotten, most notably a ring being lifted from
one’s person and thus granting access to a gun’s control to anyone with the ring or by someone
forgetting their access code at a time when needed (Introduction section, paragraph 3). Biometric
technology has also been tapped as a way to make guns safer. The most prominent proposals are
either fingerprint identification or what has been termed as dynamic handgrip recognition (Chen
& Recce, 2007, Introduction section, paragraphs 5 and 6). Because fingerprint identification only
works when the prints can be clearly read, the technology would be useless if tried under adverse
conditions (for example, if the gun were wet) or if the fingers were covered (as with gloves)
(Chen & Recce, 2007, Introduction section, paragraph 5). Thus, handgrip recognition is left as
the most efficient form of gun safety since it is more patterned off of repeated behavior than
anything else (Chen & Recce, 2007, Introduction section, paragraph 6), bringing a gun closer to
being personalized than probably anything else.
An issue arises, though, over how guns can be programmed correctly to ensure that their
sensors are not tricked and grant access to someone who is not recognized as an authorized user.
Recognizing this, Shang and Velduis (2008) posit that there are various ways to program a
firearm which would aid in preventing this from becoming an actual occurrence. They include
template-matching registration, creating a template that can be used to recognize a gun’s user(s)
at a later time; using a double-trained model, combining two out of three grip patterns during
programming and using that to create a baseline grip pattern; or by using a local absolute binary
pattern, creating an image of one’s hand shape instead of relying on pressure points to operate

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the weapon (Introduction section, paragraph 4). During experimentation, it was found that the
double-trained model and the local absolute binary pattern were the most effective methods at
prohibiting unauthorized access to a gun as they both held the probability under 10% of such an
act occurring (Shang & Velduis, 2008, Introduction section, paragraph 4). If all three were used
in conjunction with one another, the probability fell to a 3% rate of fooling a gun’s sensors
(Shang & Velduis, 2008, Introduction section, paragraph 4), proving that the more rigorous the
safety protocols, the more exclusive and personalized a firearm becomes.
Another issue arises concerning not how firearms themselves can be made safer, but how
campus security staff might be able to monitor the presence of firearms on their respective
campuses. Because campus carry will most likely equate to concealed carry, any potential
firearms will not be in public view, giving way to the potential for scanner and sensor-like
technology to be used in order to find any firearms present. Experiments have proven that at the
right frequencies, various types of light and radio waves are able to, to a certain degree, penetrate
clothing and detail objects which are hidden beneath (Jacobs, 2008, pg. 1). Using parameters
such as contrasts in color and unusual distortions to the shape of a person’s clothing, sensors can
now be programmed to detect these sort of occurrences and alert security to something that may
be of interest and warrant possible further investigation (Jacobs, 2008, pg. 2). It has been found
that for this task, the most efficient wave type for scanning a person for any hidden objects is
infrared waves; the reason being that it has a low tendency for detecting reflections and thus not
leading security to any false alarms (Jacobs, 2008, pg. 9). Of course, an examination of
applicable laws and court rulings needs to be made concerning not only the legality of these
types of technologies, but also in order to understand how legally carrying firearms has become
the issue that it currently is.

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Law
Since campus carry has generated much buzz among legal scholars as to whether or not it
should be allowed, one must understand how campus carry came about and where its initial
seeding originated from. As we can all attest to, America as a whole is very proud of its firearms
as evidenced by the seeming popularity of the Second Amendment and of organizations such as
the National Rifle Association, an organization which touts itself as the “foremost defender of
[America’s] Second Amendment rights” (National Rifle Association, 2016). But the guaranteed
assurance of the Second Amendment as a fundamental American liberty is something that has
only, relatively recently, been ruled upon as legal precedent.
In the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia, it was found that the city
of Washington, D.C., had no authority to regulate firearms within the confines of citizens’ homes
(Miller, 2011, pg. 240-241). Before this, the city would not allow people to have unregistered
firearms in their possession and would also not grant licenses to carry firearms when out in
public. The city’s law also went so far as to say that all registered firearms must be either
unloaded or have a trigger lock applied, the total sum of which essentially outlawed firearms in
the city until the decision reached in Heller (Miller, 2011, pg. 239). The Heller decision made
the Second Amendment, as Miller (2011) notes, an individual right not denied to citizens even if
they had not served in a military or para-military group (pg. 239). The opinion, however, did
state that certain prohibitions against carrying weapons still applied, such as no firearms for
felons or mentally unstable people and also no firearms in sensitive places such as schools and
government buildings (Miller, 2011, pg. 239). Thus, Heller, for the first time in American
history, formally granted American citizens the individual right to have firearms in their
possession.

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Furthermore, in the case of McDonald v. Chicago, it was formally ruled that the Second
Amendment’s protection of private citizens’ possession of firearms applied not only to federal
regulation but to that of the states as well by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment (Miller, 2011,
pg. 243). Now, states could no longer keep citizens from the possession of firearms. It had to be
made lawful. With that came the caveat that neither the Heller nor the McDonald rulings would
“‘cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as…forbidding the carrying of firearms in
sensitive places such as schools and government buildings’” (Miller, 2011, pg. 243). Thus, guns
were technically still outlawed from certain places.
A disconnect, however, exists between the law on record and reality, Miller notes. Miller
(2011) points out that there exist various degrees of freedom concerning firearms on college
campuses, the most liberal of which can be found in Utah and which prohibit any government
entity from restricting “ ‘the possession or use of firearms on either public or private property’ ”
(pg. 245). Thus, guns can be found on college campuses. This is also not a singular occurrence,
as Miller (2011) notes that there are twenty-four other schools which allow people to carry
concealed weapons on certain parts of college campuses (pg. 245). The totality of this, along
with the decisions reached in Heller and McDonald, have changed the dynamic surrounding the
freedom for private citizens to carry concealed weapons and have led to the present-day issue of
campus carry, something to which Miller (2011) is strongly opposed (pg. 254).
Concerning the presence of guns on college campuses, Kopel (2009) notes that the outlaw of
guns from public school campuses is a relatively recent occurrence. Previous decades have seen
students take guns to school and store them in lockers or in their cars for use after school. Now,
however, there is a total ban of firearms from public schools, grades K-12, and almost the same
from private K-12 school campuses and institutions of higher learning, both public and private

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(pg. 518). This was seen in the advent of the Gun-Free School Zone Act. Originally passed in
1990, it gained a brief respite in 1995 when it was found to be unconstitutional since it did not
apply to interstate commerce (it had been maintained on such grounds beforehand) (Kopel, 2009,
pg. 519). The act, however, was re-instated since it applied to guns moved in interstate
commerce, most of which had been in the time between manufacture and sale (Kopel, 2009, pg.
519). Perhaps as a consequence of this act, the United States has seen a dramatic increase in the
number of school shootings: only seven before its passage and, at the time this article was
written, 78 since (Kopel, 2009, pg. 519).
The push for campus carry came as a result of the Virginia Tech University massacre in April
2007 (Kopel, 2009, pg. 522). Since then, Students for Concealed Carry on Campus has gained a
tremendous following and spawned numerous chapters on campuses across the country as well.
In September 2009, the organization had 35,000 followers on Facebook and more than 350
chapters on university campuses (Kopel, 2009, pg. 522). They have helped lay the groundwork
for campus carry, Kopel (2009) notes, by organizing protests against the prohibition of firearms
from college campuses, of which there were 110 in the immediate wake of the Virginia Tech
massacre (pg. 522) . Bills proposing measures to this end have also been seen passing through
state legislatures as have bills touting the opposite (Kopel, 2009, pg. 523-524). Even (former)
Texas Governor Rick Perry advocated for the freedom to carry a concealed weapon to be granted
to college students and public school teachers (Kopel, 2009, pg. 525). Thus, at least in some
states, the move to allow weapons on campuses has already taken root.
Now, even though this move has been gaining momentum, it should be noted that, at least as
of right now, guns are not regulated in terms of manufacture and marketing. Currently, the
Consumer Product Safety Commission has been forbidden by Congress from exercising

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authority over firearms, ammunition, and other related products in the same way in which they
do over other consumer products (pg. 1196). In place of official, comprehensive federal
regulation can instead be found a patchwork of individual federal and state laws governing the
design of guns (pg. 1196). Vernick and Teret (2000) posit that instead of this being the case,
guns can be made safer and gun control more effective if there would exist comprehensive
federal regulation of firearms, including design standards; stricter regulation of guns which could
be more attractive to criminals; recall authority; improved supervision of vendors; and making
firearm manufacturers subject to any potential litigation that could potentially come their way
(pg. 1197). They are not alone.
DeFrancesco, Lester, Teret, and Vernick (2000) go one step further and draft a model law to
be used for the regulation of firearms. In it, they first promote the creation of a State Handgun
Standard Commission, the purpose of which would be to establish appropriate regulations aimed
at implementing and enforcing a set standard of handgun safety and performance benchmarks
(pg. 6). These would include the personalized of handguns and would make such technology a
required feature in any future manufactured weapons (DeFrancesco, Lester, Teret, & Vernick,
2000, pg. 1; pg. 9). The commission would then have the responsibility of testing safety
implements and, if the technology failed to meet the code, denying a manufacture the permission
to release their weapon to the public until it did meet the standard (DeFrancesco, Lester, Teret, &
Vernick, 2000, pg. 10). Of course, there would be exemptions to the law, older firearms being
“grandfathered in” if you will (DeFrancesco, Lester, Teret, & Vernick, 2000, pg. 12), and there
would be penalties for failing to abide it (DeFrancesco, Lester, Teret, & Vernick, 2000, pg. 13-
14). So it is readily seen that there is a push to make firearms meet a certain standard of safety, a
push that will undoubtedly make its way into the discussion concerning campus carry.

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Since it has been proposed here that body scanners might be an effective tool in keeping
track of people with firearms, the legality of doing such must be examined as well. In the
aftermath of the attempted Christmas Day bombing in 2009, there was renewed interest in
airports increasing security by installing full-body x-ray scanners (Abeyratne, 2010, pg. 74). In
theory and in practice, they can outline features and contours of a person’s body and can be an
effective resource in finding concealed explosives (Abeyratne, 2010, pg. 74). This can cross the
line however, legal scholars suggest, between security and invasion of privacy since a person has
the authority to determine what they want to share concerning themselves with others
(Abeyratne, 2010, pg. 76), making airports (and other places of business) slow in adding them to
their security arsenal, especially if they are to be used by government agents (Abeyratne, 2010,
pg. 74-75). Now, while college campuses are not public airports, the legal issues surrounding the
potential use of body scanners to track the presence of firearms on campus are much the same, as
students, faculty, and other members of the community are just as entitled to their rights as
anyone else. Thus, college campuses should be careful of how they approach any increased
security measures and understand how they are governed by citizens’ rights
STEP 7: Identify Conflict Between Insights and Their Sources
As Repko (2012) notes, interdisciplinarians cannot perform integration without first
having identified conflicts between disciplinary insights. There must, in fact, be conflict present
in order for integration to be performed since it arises from “’…the irreducibly different,
conflicting, or even incommensurate principles’ by which that part of reality they study operates
(Repko, 2012, pg. 294). These insights can either be produced by authors from the same
discipline or by authors from different disciplines (Repko, 2012, pg. 294-295). In the research,
there were conflicts, first of all, in between the disciplines; the primary one being how best to

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control firearms and avoid the tragic results that might become reality if firearms are used in the
commission of violent activity. Miller (2011) notes that even though Heller formally granted
citizens the right to keep personal firearms for protection of their homes, universities are free to
regulate Second Amendment rights on campuses since “…gun-free zones are analogous to the
types of time, manner, and place restrictions often imposed on conduct protected by the First
Amendment” that are used in order to not have a disrupted “academic learning environment”
(pg. 251-252). Universities have this power since they have been endowed with the authority to
make rules and regulations over members of the campus community that will foster the most
conducive atmosphere for learning that they possibly can (Miller, 2011, pg. 244). Thus, it is a
way to keep the community safe and help foster a positive learning environment. On the other
hand, scientists believe that guns can be personalized and made safer using biometric
technology. The most effective tool that has been theorized in reaching this end is dynamic
handgrip recognition since a person’s hand grip is a developed behavior and thus unique to that
certain person (Chen & Recce, 2007, pg. 2). Thus, the most adequate form of regulating firearms
takes two, completely different approaches between authors in each individual discipline.
An issue also arises between the disciplines concerning the implementation of extra
security measures in the wake of campus carry. If college campuses do pursue body scanners to
keep watch over the presence of firearms, they must first be absolutely sure that they are in
accordance with the law since they do undoubtedly allow people to intrude into a person’s
privacy. Thus, there is a conflict between assumptions since the law regulates how far a person,
physically or otherwise, can intrude into someone’s space before it becomes “illegal”
(Abeyratne, 2010, pg. 74)

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There are also conflicts to be found within the disciplines themselves. In the discipline of
law, there are two opposing views concerning how best to keep gun violence incidents from
occurring on college campuses. As noted above, there are those who believe that banning guns
from college campuses is the answer (Miller, 2011, pg. 254). There are also those in the law
discipline who believe otherwise, that allowing people to carry firearms on campus and letting
the public know such is a deterrent to anyone who would seek to perpetrate violent acts against
the campus community. As Kopel (2009) notes, most often-times those who are following no-
carry rules are only law-abiding citizens, giving criminals the upper hand. Furthermore, laws
allowing campus carrying freedom may be restrictive in nature, allowing only certain members
of the campus community to have firearms on their person while on-site (pg. 584). Thus, there
are those within the framework of the law who disagree on the most effective ways at curbing
the threat of gun violence on university campuses.
STEP 8: Create Common Ground
The next step in the interdisciplinary research process is creating common ground,
necessary step in fostering “…collaborative communication among disciplinary scholars and
[reconciling] their different insights and theories on a particular problem” (Repko, 2012, pg.
323). One method used in creating common ground is extension, which is extending the meaning
of concepts beyond the boundaries of their original disciplines and into the “domains of the other
relevant discipline(s)” (Newell as cited in Repko, 2012, pg. 340). When it comes to the issue of
gun control and gun safety, the conversation should perhaps begin, instead of at simply limiting
access to weapons, at imposing design standards that would be the required bare minimum
before a weapon reaches the market (Vernick, 2000, pg. 1197). This would help ensure that
firearms each come with a baseline level of safety features already in place, making it more

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difficult for them to be used in the commission of violent criminal activity not just on campuses,
but in the public domain as a whole.
Extension can further be used to bridge the gap between the use of body scanners and the
legal questions which are associated with them. Since campus carry will no doubt change the
dynamic of campus security, if schools pursue body scanners to keep track of firearms’ presence
they should also be up front with members or potential members of the campus community about
what they are doing. They should make members sign a waiver stating that they understand what
the body scanners are for and should then be careful to ensure that they along with the resulting
information are used only to track firearms; nothing else could be tracked or confiscated even if
that item were illegal. Thus, security guards would be mindful to protect campus members’
Fourth Amendment rights while at the same time monitoring firearms, which have the potential
to unleash vast destruction and carnage if used for such a purpose.
The reconciliation of conflicting insights can also take the form of redefinition,
“redefining concepts in different texts and contexts to bring out a common meaning” (Repko,
2012, pg. 336). In the case of the conflict between authors both within the framework of the law,
the concept over which there exists disagreement is that of limiting access to firearms on college
campuses. One believes that a total ban of firearms from college campuses is in order; the other
that only allowing certain people the privilege of carrying is the way to go. The redefinition of
this should be some sort of merit-based approach that one must have attained, and maintain, in
order to be allowed to carry weapons within the boundaries of the campus community. They
should be legal standards applying to every college campus falling under campus carry (i.e. no
history of criminal activity) and also community standards that each individual campus feels that,
if one has attained to them, show a level of responsibility and maturity that show one is capable

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of carrying a firearm in a responsible manner. These can include levels of being a campus
employee; being a certain class/GPA level; or having a history of being called to a campus’s
community standards office for violating community standards. This redefinition would allow
campus carry but also allow campuses to maintain control over who can, in fact, be carrying at
any given time while on campus. Thus it is possible to create common ground over which
conflicting insights can have a meaningful dialog.
STEP 9: Construct a More Comprehensive Understanding
After identifying conflicts between insights and the creation of common ground between
them comes the construction of a more comprehensive understanding, defined by Repko (2012)
as “the integration of insights to produce a new and more nuanced whole” (pg. 382). This is the
overarching goal of the interdisciplinary research process and is what allows us to reach a new
understanding of the issue at hand, an understanding that reaches across the boundaries of the
disciplines used to study the complex problem and allows one to bridge the gap between those
disciplines (Repko, 2012, pg. 383). In the case of this particular study, those disciplines are
engineering and legal studies. Since the issue under investigation is whether or not guns should
be allowed on college campuses through the enactment of Texas State Bill SB 11 (and other
similar bills which will undoubtedly be introduced in other states’ legislatures), it helps one’s
understanding to know that, as has already been shown prior to this point, this extension of the
legal right to carry firearms on college campuses comes in the wake of the Supreme Court’s
decision in District of Columbia v. Heller that citizens have the legal right to carry firearms on
their person. It should also be reiterated that there exists the technology to make guns safer,
“smarter,” and “personalized,” but that there has been very little in the way of federal oversight
and regulation that makes these technologies a required feature in the design, manufacture, and

CAMPUS CARRY 22
sale of firearms to the American people (DeFrancesco, Lester, Teret, & Vernick, 2000, p. 1). All
of these factors surely play a part and deserve a fair hearing in the debate centering on whether or
not guns should be allowed on college campuses.
These elements can be brought together and can help contribute to making campus carry
a safer, more viable reality than what some people believe it will end up being. One thing that
can be done is to make smart gun technology a required feature on firearms manufactured from
this point forward, a move made in much the same way that there are safety standards to be met
on many other consumer products such as cars, toiletries, electronics, and other things of that
nature. Another thing that can be done is for students, faculty/staff, and others who wish to
participate in campus carry to submit proof of their legal license to carry a firearm and also proof
that it been registered with the state and meets safety requirements. For older firearms, this
would be proof that the firearm was manufactured before a certain date, the date being the one in
which safety features were made standard and subject to regulation. Again, the legal license
would ideally be one filed with the state for legal purposes and also proof that the one wishing to
carry on campus meets whatever standards the university sets in place as worthy of being met if
one wishes to take advantage of such a privilege. These all go hand-in-hand and would surely go
a long way in helping make campus carry a safer reality.
STEP 10: Communicating the Results
STEP 10 of the IRP is communicating the results – or, as Repko notes, achieving “unity,
coherence, and balance among the disciplinary influences that have contributed to the
understanding” (Newell, as cited in Repko, 2012, pg. 425) – and reflecting on the research
project as a whole (Repko, 2012, pg. 410). Reflecting on the understanding given in STEP 9, the
views put forth by forth by each individual discipline are not mutually exclusive of one another.

CAMPUS CARRY 23
They each make valid points and are worthy of consideration when it comes to discussing
campus carry and what its effect will be. But to say that campus carry should not (or should,
depending on one’s views) without first considering what alternatives can be done to make it
safer, more restrictive, or what have you, would be akin to, to borrow an old expression,
throwing the baby out with the bathwater and tossing out some good possibilities that would
make campus carry a viable reality. Thus, they each need to be considered and mined for how
they can be used.
This particular research project, overall, had some seemingly good strong points which it
presented. One was that it engaged the naysayers and pointed out how campus carry could
possibly be made safer. That being said, it could have engaged that side of the coin more instead
of approaching this issue from the view that technology was an obvious answer to making guns
and campus carry safer. Another weakness that this project had came in the research. There was
trouble in finding various alternatives than what was presented in terms of technology that can be
used to make guns safer. Surely, there are more research articles written on the topic; they were
just hard to find. Also, it was hard to find any up to date articles concerning the federal
regulation of firearms design. The latest that was found for this project was written in 2000;
hopefully that information is not obsolete.
Identifying conflicts was really not all that difficult to do, nor was creating common
ground. As Repko (2012) noted, creating common ground requires “original thought, close
reading, analytical reasoning, [and] creativity...” (pg. 322). Because of this much latitude
afforded the researcher in the process, it was fairly simple to take it and run with it, for lack of a
better description, in a way that (hopefully) made sense.

CAMPUS CARRY 24
As far as testing and assessing the new understanding put forth by this project, it can be
helpful to families and communities by placing an emphasis on gun safety. If there were indeed
to be placed on firearms more stringent safety requirements, then there could possibly be not
only safer campuses if they adopted campus carry, but also a potentially safer society as a whole
since the required design features would apply to all firearms, not just those on campuses. Thus,
society as a whole would benefit. This project also seems to hold up under the Newell Test since
it advocates certain action to be taken and would be useful to those in society with a stake in the
solution to this problem. It is that “bridge between…the academy and the real world” (Repko,
2012, pg. 419).
All that being put forth, it would do researchers well to study what the economic effects
will be since these advocated reforms are not free. It will take money on the part of firearms
manufacturers to make these safety features a part of their guns and will push costs up in order to
continue manufacturing and selling firearms at a profitable level. It will also take money for
regulatory agencies to be equipped to handle the wave of firearms that will need to be registered
and inspected if these ideas were to be put into action. Thus, economic effects will need to be
studied.

CAMPUS CARRY 25
References
Abeyratne, R. (2010). Full body scanners at airports-the balance between privacy and state
responsibility. Journal of Transportation Security, 3(2), 73-85.
The Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus, & The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. (n.d.). Laws
concerning concealed firearms on campus in Texas. Retrieved February 8, 2016, from
http://www.armedcampuses.org/texas/
Chen, Z., & Recce, M. (2007). Handgrip recognition. Journal of Engineering, Computing and
Architecture, 1(2).
DeFrancesco, S., Lester, K. J., Teret, S. P., & Vernick, J. S. (2000). A model handgun safety
standard act. Retrieved from http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-
hopkins-center-for-gun-policy-and-research/publications/Model_Law_2ed.pdf
Jacobs, E. L., Moyer, S., Franck, C. C., DeLucia, F. C., Casto, C., Petkie, D. T., & Halford, C. E.
(2006, May). Concealed weapon identification using terahertz imaging sensors. Defense
and Security Symposium, 62120J-1 - 62120J-10.
Kopel, D. B. (2009). Pretend'gun-free'school zones: A deadly legal fiction. Connecticut Law
Review, 42(2), 515-584.
Miller, J. H. (2011). The second amendment goes to college. Seattle University Law Review, 35,
235.
National Rifle Association. (2016). A brief history of the NRA. Retrieved from
https://home.nra.org/about-the-nra/
Repko, A. (2012). Interdisciplinary research: Process and theory. Los Angeles, Sage.

CAMPUS CARRY 26
Shang, X., & Veldhuis, R. N. (2008, September). Grip-pattern verification for smart gun based
on maximum-pairwise comparison and mean-template comparison. Biometrics: Theory,
Applications and Systems, 2008. BTAS 2008. 2nd IEEE International Conference, 1-5.
Vernick, J. S., & Teret, S. P. (2000). A public health approach to regulating firearms as
consumer products. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 148(4), 1193-1211.

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