Linda Garcia and Terance Barela

lmg17@unm.edu

March 3, 2016

University of New Mexico

President of UNM
1155 University Blvd.
Albuquerque,

NM

SE

87106-

4320

Dear Students and Faculty:

The analytical report that my partner and I did not have a certain direction towards gun control on
UNMs campus. Therefore, we decided to distribute both the pros and cons of why students and
faculty should or should not carry guns. Would gun control be beneficial, or a tragedy on UNM
campus?
Together, my partner and I have collected significant data of the benefits of gun control, as well as
the cons of students and faculty carrying guns on the University campus. We performed surveys and
interviews amongst our fellow students and faculty and received valid information. Other ways we
gathered information about gun use on a University campus was through scholarly journals, and the
internet.
In order to present our information, we designed a PowerPoint which includes:

Introduction-overall view of why gun laws are a major issue today

Pros: estimated half the people believe they feel safer on the streets with gun control
Cons: estimated half the people believe that they feel safer owning a gun
Methods: ways we gathered our information and opinions
Results: surveys and interviews resulted to about 50/50 on opinions of faculty and staff
Secondary Research: sources gathered from outside of UNM
Discussion and Conclusion: there is no right or wrong answer, everyone has their own
opinion

Your time is greatly appreciated.

Thank you!
Linda Garcia and Terance Barela

Introduction
Today, gun control is a serious issue concerning every person who is eighteen or older,
and able to purchase and own a gun. Not every person has the same opinion about owning a gun

on the university campus. In order to perform our analytical results on gun control we discussed
the pros and cons. We have supported our results with results from our surveys and interviews
from UNM students and faculty, and visual arguments which were pulled from the internet.
Many students are also very responsible when it comes to taking care of their things
such as using a gun for self-protection and that only. Universities normally accept any student
into their schools no matter what kind of background they have, so if gun control laws were
banned on a university campus it could lead to a student with felony charges owning a gun. Even
if there are gun laws it is still easy for

Methods
Conducting surveys and interviews on fellow
students and faculty at UNM. There was no right or wrong
answer to the overall gun control. By conducting surveys, we
were able to have a better understanding of different opinions.
My partner and I decided to ask five questions so that people

Results
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0

Gun Control

Are you for or Would you feel safer

Should gun stores
4. Do you think Do
a you thin
against gun control?
if people owned only sell certain background check
to purchas
guns in their own types of guns? should be required
should be
home, including
prior to purchasing from
a
18
yourself.
gun?

could conclude why they agreed or disagreed on whether gun

control should be enforced more on campus. Surveys gave us a

Yes

more detailed description of our five questions. Surveys were

more helpful than interviews even though there were much less
Moving from left to right
of them, it was better than receiving a yes or no answer.
Although there were a variety of answers, our surveys gave us
a more in depth analysis of our research here at the
University of New Mexico.

on the bar graph above on

question 1 Are you for or
against gun control? 22
people were not for gun

Page
2

No

control while 28 said yes. Question 2 Would you feel safer

more

of

response

if people owned guns in their own home including yourself?

comparison to look at. As

27 people said yes, while 23 said no. Looking at the third

for the interviews we

results on the bar graph, Should gun only sell certain types of

interviewed both UNM

guns? only 9 people answered yes while 41 people said no.

students male and female.

The fourth question, Do you think a background check should

The male was against gun

be required prior to purchasing a gun? came to 37 people

control, and the female

saying yes and only 13 people saying no. For the last

was in the middle of for

question asked on the survey, Do you think the age to

and against it. (Detailed

purchase a gun should be raised from 18-21? 21 people

information on interviews

responded yes while 29 people responded no. The first two

in the appendix.)

questions, as well as the third question had about a 50/50

comparison whereas the third and fourth questions had much

Page
3

Visual arguments and the internet sources. Many of our peers at UNM could agree that
they would prefer seeing a picture of what the pros and cons are of gun control, so on our power
point we put many visuals describing this. An example of this would be the second amendment
which many college students are familiar with which is A well-regulated Militia, being necessary
to the security of a Free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed." By putting this with a picture on it hopefully gave our classmates an understanding of
what their rights are at the time being. Using the internet was more of a broad opinion of gun
control with many different opinions. For example Barack Obama is for gun control and the
internet had people who was rooting for his choices as well as people who were sickened by it.
Classmates had many different opinions and hopefully by distributing the visual arguments on our
slides and using internet sources it helped them get a better understanding of what is going on in
the country rather than the school.

Distributing the pros important in gun control. People begin to feel threatened when
others are walking down the street carrying a gun and not knowing what exactly is going on in
their minds. Strict laws on gun control can reduce gun deaths, if less people have access to guns
the less likely people are to injure themselves and others. Universities such as UNM are stressful
environments and handing a young adult a gun in such an environment could make a student more
accessible to a suicide. Students also have much more going on during the day which could lead to
taking less care of their fire arms, and causing accidental shooting. University campuses such as
UNM have law enforcement on duty most of the time which should be enough to keep the campus
safe. Having some students who have been attending UNM for many years, or professors who
have previously attended say there has not been any instances of any gun problems in the past.

Many students believe there should be no exception at all to owning a gun on a university campus,
it could cause serious danger to other students as well as that student.

Distributing the cons is just as important as distributing the pros. Students who have
access to get to a gun and break the law with it. Students that are responsible could feel unsafe
walking around on campus empty handed, especially if there is a shooting at that particular
school. There are also many students and faculty who are taking night classes at UNM, and there
are many homeless people around who could do something late such as sexual assault especially
on woman. Even if there are gun laws students still could get access to a gun without barely trying
and commit suicide. There are also other ways students could commit suicide not using a gun.
Background checks on students could cause some major issues because many students enjoy their
privacy. Especially at a University where after students are trying to get jobs, and if somehow the
employer gets ahold of those records they will not get that job. Also foreign invaders target large
locations which could potentially lead to an attack on a big university, and in this case students
could prevent this attack and protect themselves. Some students believe they could own a gun on
campus, it would allow more self-protection and feel safer independently.

Conclusion/Discussion
Gun control is not just a controversial issue within the United States, it is also a
community issue that effects people on campus here at the University of New Mexico. We believe
students should not be allowed to carry fire arms on a campus, however people should be able to
have them in their homes. Students can continue to benefit from gun control on campus by not
having to worry whether or not their peers are concealing a weapon in the classroom or at any
other location on campus. Also a background check should be given to anyone who decides to
purchase a gun. According to our results, there is no wrong or right answer with gun control in
America or UNM, but hopefully this issue will end and there will be a safer environment at UNM.

Appendix
Survey Questions
1.
2.
3.
4.

Are you for or against gun control?

Would you feel safer if people owned guns in their own home including yourself?
Should gun stores only sell certain types of guns?
Do you think background checks should be done prior to purchasing a gun?

5.

Do you think the age of purchasing a gun should be raised from 18 to 21?

Interviews
Toms Garcia, 22, Senior at UNM
1.

Question: Are you for or against gun control?

Answer: Against because it is not stopping crime because criminals can still get guns
illegally while law abiding citizens are getting their guns taken away by the
government.

2.

Q: Would you feel safer if people owned guns in their own home including yourself?
A: Yes because what if someone breaks in and tries to rob you? It would be better to
be able to protect yourself right then and there rather than waiting for police to get
there. Also for women because it makes more sense for a woman to protect herself
from being harmed or raped.

3.

Q: Should gun stores only sell certain types of guns?

A: No because that is still taking a law away from a law abiding citizen. An assault
rifle does the same type of thing any other gun can do. They were both made to shoot.

4.

Q: Do you think a background check needs to be done prior to purchasing a gun? A:

Yes. You dont want criminals who are likely to commit crime to buy guns or dont
want mentally ill to buy guns either.

5.

Q: Do you think age of purchasing a gun should be raised from 18 to 21?

A: No because at 18 you can purchase rifles and shot guns. And can purchase
handguns at 21. Most crimes are committed using handguns anyways

Interview # 2
Rachel Culbertson, 20, UNM sophomore
1.

Q. Are you for or against gun control?

A. I have mixed emotions because I take night classes at UNM and would feel more
protected if I had one, but also do not want strangers around me carrying them.

2.

Q. Would you feel safer if people owned guns in their own home including yourself?
A. In their home yes, people should have all the rights to carry guns in their own
home got self-protection.

3.

Q. Should gun stores only sell certain types of guns?

A. Definitely, there is no need whatsoever for a college student to own an assault rifle,
for self-protection a small handgun should do just fine.

4.

Q. Do you think a background check needs to be done prior to purchasing a gun?

A. Background checks should be mandatory, I dont think someone with felonies
especially if it involves a gun should be allowed to carry one.

5.

Q. Do you think age of purchasing a gun should be raised from 18 to 21? A. Yes, if the
drinking age is 21, the gun laws should also be 21.

Works Cited
Arrigo, Bruce A., and Austin Acheson. "Concealed Carry Bans and the American College
Campus: A Law, Social Sciences, and Policy Perspective." Contemporary Justice Review
19.1 (2016): 120-41. Web. 12 Feb. 2016.

Cooper, Marc. "Gun Control Is a Misfire." American Conservative 15.2 (2016): 2-20.
Web. Jan.-Feb. 2016.
Do We Need Stricter Gun Control? - The People Speak. YouTube. 2015. Web. Jan.-Feb. 2016.

Goldberg, Jeffery. "The Case for More Guns (and More Gun Control)." The Atlantic. Dec. 2012.
Web. 20 Feb. 2016.

ProCon.org. "Gun Control ProCon.org" ProCon.org. 26 Feb. 2016. Web. 2 Mar. 2016.

<http://gun-control.procon.org/>.
Reisen, Matthew. "On the Street." Daily Lobo [Albuquerque] 16 Feb. 2016, Volume 120 ed., sec.
43: 2. Print.

Winker, Margaret A., Kamran Abbasi, and Frederick P. Rivara. "Unsafe and understudied: the
US gun problem." BMJ: British Medical Journal 13 Feb. 2016: i578. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 3 Mar. 2016

Terance Barela
Reflection
Presenting and learning about the topic Gun control gave me a better overall
understanding as to why people believe there should be gun laws or not. During our presentation
my partner and I went over the pros and cons, which most of our results came from the internet as
well as the interviews. The internet gave us a great understanding of what people around the world
thought about gun laws, as compared to surveys, which was more UNM based. However, the
answers seemed to be level throughout our process on a fifty-fifty scale. Distributing the pros and
cons was most important in our presentation rather than being bias. An audience such as the one
we presented to (college students) always seem to have different opinions about everything. By
the way our results came out an estimated half of the class would have not enjoyed our
presentation as much if we just went over one of the pros or cons.

During peer reviews Kim gave me some very good instructive advice, he displayed the
negatives, as well what he enjoyed about our project. One of which that could improve it is to
make the IMRAD structure more clear, which is why they are labeled before every section. Also
Kim remembered from our presentation some of the pictures we posted conducting our visual
arguments, especially the second amendments one, which we originally did not include in our
project but now it is. Kim enjoyed the distribution of pros and cons, and actually changed his mind
on gun control to where he now thinks there should be gun laws rather than not. He also enjoyed
the cover page and how we labeled what we were going to discuss in our paper.
In our paper we decided to go just go over the main topics, and from our results from
the interviews there were some topics we discussed that people did not seem too fond of or as if it
was pointless. An example of this would be common sense demonstrations such as if children
should be allowed to carry guns at school even in elementary, which obviously is a big problem
and they would have to change the laws as a whole for this. We said what we thought was the
most important such as accidental deaths, as well as suicide. My partner and I distributed our work
just about evenly to where not one of us did a certain topic, but we did the whole thing together,
distributing ideas and sharing them. Our PowerPoint was a big help to us getting the key points to
our paper such as discussing our secondary research which was the visuals, and how the issue is
not only a problem on the UNM campus but also in the community or everywhere as a whole. In
our presentation it may have seemed as if we were talking about everywhere rather than just UNM
as well, but my partner and I thought it would be intelligent if we shared how it is a problem
everywhere. However, all of our primary research is UNM based. Our goal was to learn and teach
how gun control laws are playing a major role in society today, and just to teach the negatives and
positives because everyone has a different opinion on this topic.

Revised Information
1.) Changed audience from UNM students and faculty to The president of UNM
2.) Made research question clearer. Also stated it in the cover letter. Would gun control be
beneficial, or a tragedy on UNM campus?

3.) Made each section have its own particular information. I took some information that
was part of the methods and put them with the methods.
4.) Changed unnecessary wording around such as got our point across that was not
meant to be there.