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"550 rapes stopped everyday just by showing a gun"

Kalahari

Kalahari

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This is a statistic I've seen a few times in defense of guns. The source is apparently from the 2000 National Crime Victimization Survey, but I can't for the life of me find the statistic within the report, or figure out how to draw it out. Can anyone lend me a hand? I need to use the statistic but I want to make sure it is accurate first...it certainly seems a little high.

Original source:
http://political-resources.com/misc/GunFacts4-0-Screen.pdf

Source quoted:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cvus00.pdf
 
I doubt it is accurate. Ask yourself how many people carry. Now how many of those are women. Now how many of those are getting approached by rapists or in date rape scenarios. See my point? The numbers don't work. Maybe, you can get that in one year, but I seriously doubt it.
 
I don't know???

I don't know, but everytime I have a gun on the girls run from me?? Does that count as a save???

[rolleyes]

terraformer said:
I doubt it is accurate. Ask yourself how many people carry. Now how many of those are women. Now how many of those are getting approached by rapists or in date rape scenarios. See my point? The numbers don't work. Maybe, you can get that in one year, but I seriously doubt it.
Click to expand...
 
The source they list is the link I posted...its basically a few hundred pages of hard data, but I was unable to find the source of that 550 number they claim.
 
Kalahari said:
The source they list is the link I posted...its basically a few hundred pages of hard data, but I was unable to find the source of that 550 number they claim.
Click to expand...

I became interested in this and started crunching some numbers. You're right, nowhere does it explicitly state the 550 number, nor mention firearms as a separate category for response to an attack (they show ATTACKERS using what types of firearms, but only show when VICTIMS used a "weapon" or threatened with a "weapon", which could be anything, knife, gun, baseball bat, mace, etc)

Anyhow, I think I found where the number came from in that mass of data-

in
Table 72. Percent of victimizations in which self-protective measures were employed, by person taking the measure, outcome of action and type of crime

this line:

Rape/Sexual assault/a 199,440

If you divide that number by 365 you get: 546 which rounds to 550

So, 550 times per day a victim or potential victim of rape employs self-protective measures.

However, according to this report-

1) these self-protective measures include yelling, fighting, running away, showing weapon, hiding, etc.
2) this number 199,440 includes completed rapes too, i.e. just because a victim employed self protective measures doesn't mean the rape was avoided, just that during the commission or attempted commission of a sexual assualt, people (mostly women) fought back in some fashion 550 times/day

Anyhow, so, gunfacts might be wrong on the number, but it could be an honest mistake if you just read the title of the chart and made assumptions about what "self-protective measures" meant.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, that's where I found error....its a rather large assumption to make that all these women are carrying guns.
 
Kalahari said:
Yeah, that's where I found error....its a rather large assumption to make that all these women are carrying guns.
Click to expand...

I don't think this number is based on CCW alone. It probably also includes showing a gun in a home too.
With 50 states 550 would only be 11 gun uses per woman, per state, per day. Of course some states may have 0 and others may have 20-30 or more.
 
Use clever text like the Obama Administration:

550 Rapes stopped or avoided by using or showing a firearm. (Kind of like jobs saved, right?)

I don't have the study on hand, but I'll start looking for it.

A group of researchers asked prisoners convicted of violent crimes in several maximum security prisons a series of questions. These are some of the most violent criminals in the "rehabilitation" system.

86% said they they had, at least once, decided not to commit a crime because they believed their intended victem might have been armed.

7?% (can't recall the second digit at the moment) reported that their "greatest fear" when committing a crime was that the victem would have a gun.

The greastest value of a self-defense weapon is not is ability to end an attack that has started but to prevent one from starting in the first place.

Even if only a fraction of the 550 rapes where stopped by displaying a firearm, how many more were "avoided"?
 
http://www.policyalmanac.org/crime/archive/crs_gun_control.shtml

Self-defense. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, NCVS data from 1987 to 1992 indicate that in each of those years, roughly 62,200 victims of violent crime (1% of all victims of such crimes) used guns to defend themselves. Another 20,000 persons each year used guns to protect property. Persons in the business of self-protection (police officers, armed security guards) may have been included in the survey. Another source of information on the use of firearms for self-defense is the "National Self Defense Survey" conducted by criminology professor Gary Kleck of Florida State University in the spring of 1993. Citing responses from 4,978 households, Dr. Kleck estimated that handguns have been used 2.1 million times per year for self-defense, and that all types of guns have been used approximately 2.5 million times a year for that purpose, during the 1988-1993 period.
Click to expand...

62,200 / year = 170 / day - That's all violent crime, not just rapes.

Suicides, Accidents, and Other Deaths. Firearm fatalities have decreased continuously since 1993. The source of national data on firearm deaths is the publication Vital Statistics, published each year by the National Center for Health Statistics. Firearm deaths reported by coroners in each state are presented in four categories: homicides and legal intervention, suicides, accidents, and unknown circumstances. In 1999, a total of 28,874 firearm deaths occurred, according to such reports. Of this total, 11,127 were homicides or due to legal intervention; 16,599 were suicides; 824 were unintentional (accidental) shootings; and 324 were of unknown cause. From 1993 to 1998, firearm-related deaths decreased by an average rate of 5% annually, for an overall decrease of 27%. Also in 1999, there were 1,776 juvenile (under 18 years of age) deaths attributed to firearms. Of the juvenile total, 1,010 were homicides or due to legal intervention; 558 were suicides; 158 were unintentional; and 50 were of unknown cause. From 1993 to 1999, firearm-related deaths for juveniles have decreased by an average rate of 10% annually, for an overall decrease of 46%.
Click to expand...

Compared to a little less than 3 accidental deaths per day and 79 total firearm deaths.
 
Kalahari said:
Yeah, that's where I found error....its a rather large assumption to make that all these women are carrying guns.
Click to expand...

Speaking of large assumptions, why do you assume it's the intended victim that showed the gun? It might have been someone with them, a stranger who happened upon the incident, or even a police officer reporting to the scene. All the statement says is that a gun was shown.

Likewise, why assume they are carrying? Could be happening in their home. Could even be the attempted rapist's own gun that is used to stop a rape in a domestic situation, if the intended victim got to it first.
 
csharpdev said:
Considering that not all rapes are reported, I wonder how many times a rape is stopped or avoided by brandishing a firearm that don't get reported?

If not all victims report successful rapes I wonder how many would be victims report unsuccessful rapes?
Click to expand...

Yes, rapes are known to be under reported and also if they used a firearm that was not registered or they feared being prosecuted for using a gun these would be under reported too.
 
These are all valid points, but they don't point to the statistic that 550 rapes are stopped every day by someone with a gun.
 
Kalahari said:
These are all valid points, but they don't point to the statistic that 550 rapes are stopped every day by someone with a gun.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it would appear that is a pretty tenuous "deduction" from the data - hard to imagine sufficient data there to really measure this...

Not that I don't think it is possible that women armed with keys, phones, guns, mace, tasers, are defending themselves, but I guess I'd be surprised that the data was really collected in such a manner to allow this information to be extracted.
 
A statistic we can point to - Firearms are used defensively in more than 170 violent crimes every day. That's based on the NCVS database, which is drawn from police reports. That mean, 170 times per day people report using firearms defensively in crimes that are actually reported.

Firearms kill less than half that number of people and we can be pretty dang sure that nearly every firearms death is reported.

Even if only half of the violent crimes are reported (media loves quoting only 1 in 10 rapes are ever reported) Firearms are used defensively five times more often than they kill someone and more than 100 times more often than they cause an accidental death!
 

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