tlambert

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…

Which does not explain why there was no change in the suburbs, where there was just as much publicity. Frank Crary said: Presumably, the publicity was about women in Orlando carrying guns, not women in the suburbs of Orlando carrying them. It seems likely that a significant number of women from…

Kevin Langston said: It really doesn't matter whether 0.2% or 20% of the women in a given area carry a .38 caliber protector. What matters is that 50% of the potential rapists/muggers/etc believe that a significant number of their potential victims can immediately fend off their attack, thus…

With-gun robberies are three times as likely as with-knife robberies to be fatal to the victim[1], and it seems plausible that this lethality extends to other crimes. Andy Freeman said: No, with-gun robberies are not three times as likely as with-knife robberies to be fatal to the victim. Lambert…

So why credit the reduction in rape and burglary to the program? Oh I see, you would claim this as an indirect effect, where rapists and burglars gave up because they were worried about armed victims. Well, what if some criminals instead armed themselves to help deal with this threat. With-gun…

Kleck also states that the percentage decrease was larger than in any other US city with a population of over 100,000. Kleck neglects to tell us what the population of Orlando was, but by looking at the granularity of the data you can deduce that the population of Orlando was less than 100,000 for…

Since guns are very rarely used to defend against rapists, and only a small fraction of rapes are committed at gun point, and there is no good evidence for any deterrent effect for guns preventing rape, I doubt if gun control has a major effect on rape. Eric Johnson said: I assume you mean 'in…

Greg Booth said: A previous poster claims guns are not affective in stopping rapes. The evidence suggests otherwise. [There was a gun training course for Orlando women in 1966] The results? In 1966 there were 36 rapes per 100,000 people in Orlando, triple the 1965 rate. In 1967, there were 4.…

My model has two parameters (pre 1920 rate, post 1920 rate). Your model has four parameters (starting rate, first decrease, second decrease, year that rate of decrease changed). The more parameters that your model has, the easier it is to fit the data. Frank Crary said: However, no one is…

I was able to find some statistics on homicides in South Australia (in "South Australian Historical Statistics" Vamplew, Richards,Jaensch and Hancock) Unfortunately, they only cover the period 1921-1979, but we can use them to see if gun control, introduced in SA in 1929, had any effect. We can use…

Frank Crary said: In an effort to clear up this statistical game, I'm posting a detailed comparison of Mr. Lambert's and my models of the crime rate in New South Wales, between 1910 and 1930. The data, taken from the graph he posted on the 15th of this month, is: [Numbers deleted] (Please correct…

Could the changes be caused by noise? This calls for a t test, to see if the average homicide rate changed. Andy Freeman said: There's an interesting thing about averages. If you take the average of a declining series and compare it to the end point, you find that the average is, not surprisingly…

I decided to check the claim that crime went up following gun control in England in 1920. I compared the homicide rates for England for the period 1911-1920 with the period 1921-1930 and found that the rate declined by 8%. This change could have been caused by demographic changes that followed…

It has been pointed out to me that the 1903 gun law in England was rather weak, and that real gun control started in 1920, so I have added a line to the table below. Second and third columns are homicide rate per 100,000 Year England & Wales USA Ratio Source 1903 0.93 2.6…

Frank Crary said (referring to changes in homicide rate in NSW and Qld): The sharp drop you claim to see, is (in my opinion) not significant compared to the background variations. While this may have been real effect of gun control laws, in is at least as likely that it is a coincidence. Could the…

In a previous posting I observed that the homicide rate in New South Wales fell dramatically following the introduction of gun controls in 1920. Here, again, is the graph showing the homicide rate in NSW from 1900-1977. (Vertical scale is homicide rate per 100 000 population) 3 * 2.8 2.6…

Andy Freeman said: Why doesn't Lambert tell us about pre-control crime and murder rates and trends in Oz and compare them to post-control rates and trends? If gun control actually worked in Oz, the introduction of controls was associated with a good change in the rate trend. Could it be that there…

Larry Cipriani said: Well, if we nuke New York, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, and Detroit the crime rates in the US will be incredibly low, lower than that of just about every other nation on earth. Not so. I have grouped together Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and…

Gary Strand said: 'Twould seem that the difference between Australia's gun laws and the US' gun laws have no effect on suicide rates, since the numbers are nearly identical. By the same reasoning, you can conclude that Australia's more restrictive gun laws are the reason for the lower homicide…

This was my first ever on-line posting, to sci.math in 1988. The world wide web wasn't invented until 1989 so we didn't have links---I added them in 2004 when I posted this to my blog. Kristian Damm Jensen wrote: Consider a string of matching parentheses, i.e. a string of…