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 the whole period 1958-1972. Comparing
apples with oranges. Cute, real cute. Orlando itself experienced a
larger percentage decrease in 1963.
Greg Booth said:
I don't have an almanac handy, but Orlando is a huge city, and has been
for quite some time. Look up the info before you knock down
straw men.
It may now be a big city if you include the suburbs, but the
population of the city proper used by Kleck to compute crime rates was
95.7k in 1967. It is easy to determine this: the rape rate is given
as 4.18 and the homicide rate as 21.97. The ratio of these numbers is
4:21. This means that there were 4 rapes and 21 homicides or some
multiple of this and the population was a multiple of 95.7k. Looking
at the rates for other crimes lets us conclude that 95.7k is the most
probable figure. (The only other likely possibility is that the
number of crimes was an even number for all of these -- which is
unlikely for 5 numbers, and near impossible for 30 numbers.)
The point is that if you want to show that the reduction was unusual,
you must compare it with changes in cities with populations in the
range 50k-150k. Comparing it with cities >100k and not telling us the
population is dishonest.
Also in 1967, violent assault and burglary decreased by
25% in Orlando, in addition to the rape reductions.
And homicide increased by 22%, in spite of decreasing in Florida
overall. Should we chalk that up to the gun training program too?
Of course not. It has already been stated that none of women ever fired a
gun in defense or inappropriately.
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 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. Hence, the program could cause
more armed criminals and more homicides. It is interesting to note
that the "effect" of the the gun training program cited by Kleck (KC
in 67) was a 2% increase in robberies and a 48% increase in homicides.