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…
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 the suburbs took the gun training program. I don't see why the publicity would not have mentioned this. Furthermore, the publicity is supposed to have worked by reminding criminals of their chances of getting shot. Should we assume that a rapist will not be able to make the connection that if he…
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 forcing them to consider the potential cost of said crime. This is how deterrents work. Notice how this can explain why the Orlando program had a sudden, local effect, The effect is consistent with the extreme variation in the rate before the gun-training program --- i.e. the effect was not…
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 consistently "misreports" Zimring's data. It is Andy who consistently and wilfully "misreports" Zimring's data. Interested readers can look at his November Scientific American article, his book "Citizen's Guide to Gun Control", or the original journal article (J of Legal Studies 15 (1986):1,16). A…
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. Geoff Miller said: I had thought that Tim was restricting his argument…
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…
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 Australia' for everything above... Nope. In the US guns are used in self defence in about 0.5% of rapes. (See my recent posting.) The number of rapes committed at gunpoint is irrelevant in this case, since men almost always can outpower women based on their physical strength. She doesn't have to…
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. Before the training, rape rates had been increasing in Orlando as nationwide. 5 years after the training, rape was still below pre-training levels in Orlando, but up 308% in the surrounding areas, 96% for Florida overall, and 64% nationally. Cute. The rates for the period 1958-1972 can be found in…
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 restricting the number of free parameters in your model, except yourself: You are (or were) using this data to support your assertions that: The homicide rate in New South Wales dropped suddenly after the introduction of gun control laws in 1920, and that there was no pre-existing trend toward lower rates.…
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 the adjacent state of NSW as a "control". The SA homicide figures include "manslaughter by driving" and the NSW figures do not, so they are not strictly comparable, but before 1940 they were only two or three cases of manslaughter by driving each year in SA. The second last column is the…
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 me if I'm in error, Mr. Lambert's ascii graph reached me in a slightly garbled form.) Eeek! About half of those numbers are incorrect. I guess ascii graphs are not the most robust ways to transmit information. I have appended the correct numbers to the end of this posting, so that my calculations…
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, higher. Lambert's stats show that the pre-control rates were decreasing. Were the pre-control rates decreasing? NSW average homicide rate 1901-1910 2.3 1911-1920 2.3 There certainly is no long term trend. Perhaps there is a short term trend: NSW average homicide rate 1912-1914 2.3 1915-1917…
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 from World War I, since this killed a significant number of young males (the group that murders most.) To check for this, I looked at all the countries in [1] for which homicide data was available covering 1911-1930. A feature common to almost all these countries (Japan being the major exception) was…
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 1/3 [1] 1920 0.84 7.1 1/8 [1] 1988 0.6 9.0 1/15 [2] Over 85 years, there are lots of changes that that could affect the homicide rate. Furthermore, the years 1903 and 1988 could be atypical and give a misleading picture. I made no claim that this…
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 changes be caused by noise? This calls for a t test, to see if the average homicide rate changed. The significant events were: 1920: NSW controls all guns 1927: Queensland controls handguns and NSW drops controls on long guns So, I took three groups of years 1911-1920 (pre-control), 1921-1927 (…
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 * 2.4 * 2.2 * 2.0 * * * 1.8 * * * * * * 1.6 * * * * 1.4 * * * * * * 1.2…
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 wasn't a good change associated with the introduction of controls? "Homicide: The Social Reality" by Alison Wallace, published in 1986 by the NSW bureau of Crime Statistics and Research is an extensive study of all homicides in NSW from 1968 to 1981. This contains a graph detailing the homicide…
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 Washington DC. (1998 figures) Pop Homicid Robbery Motor Vehicle Theft Big US Cities 17.7M 25.2 938 1587 Rest of US 228.1M 7.1 165 505 US Total 245.8M 8.4 221 583 For comparison, here is Australia, (grouping Sydney and Melbourne) Syd+Mel 6.6M 2.0 85 1116 Rest of OZ 10.2M 2.…
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 rate in Australia. Actually, I'm working from the assumption stated above (which, in various forms, is used by nearly every anti-gunner) towards the one I made. What I'm curious about is, if Oz's gun laws have created it's lower crime rate (vis-a-vis the US) why didn't they create a lower suicide rate…
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 parentheses where each prefix contains more left-parentheses than right-parentheses. Now, given n left- and right parentheses, in how many ways can you order them and still get a string of matching parentheses? "The Invisible Man" replied: Here's as far as I got. Possibly far enough, perhaps too…