Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.
Greg Booth said:
A 1979 US Justice Department study of 32,000 attempted rapes show that overall, when rape is attempted, the completion rate is 36%. But when a woman defends herself with a gun, the completion rate drops to 3%.
"Rape victimization in 26 American Cities" is indeed a US Justice Department study, so I can correct all the inaccuracies in the above paragraph.
32,000 is the estimated number of rapes and attempted rapes by strangers in the 26 cities surveyed. The number of rapes and attempted rapes by strangers in the sample was about 1600.
The completion rate for rapes by strangers was 32%.
The 3% completion rate was when the woman "used/brandished gun or knife" (Response 1, Question 136 on the original survey.)
gun/knife was used for self defence in only 2% of the cases. The study marks the 3% statistic as "statistically unreliable" since it is based on less then 50 sample cases.
To give you an idea of how unreliable the 3% statistic is, the completion rate for white women who used a gun/knife is 14%, while the completion rate for white women who "resisted without force/took evasive action" was 6%.
Can we conclude that running away is better than resisting with a gun?
