Tim Lambert
tlambert
Posts by this author
April 13, 1992
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…
April 13, 1992
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…
April 6, 1992
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…
March 31, 1992
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…
March 27, 1992
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…
March 23, 1992
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…
March 19, 1992
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…
March 19, 1992
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.…
February 5, 1992
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…
January 28, 1992
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…
January 27, 1992
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…
January 26, 1992
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…
January 21, 1992
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…
January 20, 1992
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…
January 20, 1992
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…
January 15, 1992
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…
December 21, 1991
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…
November 27, 1991
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…
November 22, 1991
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…
February 22, 1988
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…