Infographic: America’s Rap Sheet

1. What the hell is going on in Bridgeport, CN that gives them a 52/1 rape/murder ratio?

   • Once a great industrial city, now they have a big gang and drug problem. They just never recovered from the economic downturn that started in the 70’s.

     http://www.npr.org/2013/01/17/169509521/in-connecticut-two-sides-of-a-deep-economic-divide

     • Thanks for that information, I was curious as well.

   • Lots of rape, not so many murders sounds like a cultural problem. The NPR column cited below twists the story heavily. It is true that CT got rid of its dominant county governments in 1960, so that suburbs could walk away from cities within the county. The result, though, wasn’t instant crime. It was instant takeover of Bridgeport and other CT cities by the core electorate of those cities. Then corruption and crime rose. By the late sixties people were moving out. And why not? Bridgeport also gained a large (34%) latino community over that time, from less than 12%. It’s about 44% Hispanic if you count the gov’s “white hispanics.” The same pattern of post-1960 change hit Hartford. Migration also affected MA (Springfield, New Bedford. Look up Cheryl Araujo in Wikipedia if you want to see how much the local culture matters.

   • That is not Bridgeport, CN. It is Bridgeport, CT as in Connecticut, that place with the “strictest gun control laws in the nation”, AND city with the highest rape statistics. Also home of other weirder than fiction crimes like the cannibal that was really sorry about eating someone’s brains.

     http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Cannibal-committed-for-60-years-4799551.php

     It is also a city credited with getting the worst Governor ever, elected. Sadly he has done worse for the state than just gun control with the economy lagging the nation, a history of passing questionable bills in the last hours of legislative sessions such as legalizing Keno, and bizarre bills such as one that legislates Bridgeport, CT first in flight. Passing the bill “after midnight June 5th” the legislative session for the year ended June 6th.
     ref:http://www.history.com/news/in-connecticut-wright-brothers-no-longer-first-in-flight

     From the CT Post article of Nov, 5, 2010:
     “Malloy received 17,973 votes in Bridgeport while Foley got 4,099, which wipes out the lead Foley had amassed statewide.”

     Malloy won in CT with a 6 or 7,000 vote lead over Foley.

     “The secretary of the state’s web site listed results for every town but Bridgeport late this afternoon. For governor, it shows Malloy with 548,378 votes, Foley with 556,787 and Independent Tom Marsh with 17,543.”

     Another interesting thing about Bridgeport is that they kept the polls open to 10pm, when the polls were supposed to close at 8pm. They are the kind of city that apparently doesn’t stock enough ballots to run an election, but has judges handy to extend hours.

     Ref:http://inthistogetherct.org/2010/11/waiting-for-bridgeport-slow-count-delays-declaration-of-malloy-as-winner/

     Ref:http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Bridgeport-ballots-counted-Malloy-wins-797923.php

     Malloy legislated a lot more than 7000 people from “law abiding citizens” to felons last year with the PA 13-3. That is why it is critical we get people out to vote.

     • Isn’t it funny that the number 3 and 4 most dangerous metro areas are both in gun ban states? Obviously the bans are really helping out right? And then, isn’t it even funnier that 1 and 2 are both in Michigan?

       Funny.

2. Moving next month to Las Vegas. Very nice to see that in spite of their “Sin City” reputation they did not make the list of 25 most dangerous cities.

   • Statistics. LV had 115 murders in 2013, up from 76 in 2012. LV is dangerous — just not as dangerous as, say, Detroit. I love LV, but then again, I carry everywhere in the City that I can.

     • Perhaps you can advise me on the best place to get training for my carry permit?

       Any advice would be appreciated.

       • Ralph did a detailed post on that a year or two ago. I’ll look it up.

         Back. Here it is: http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2012/06/ralph/shooting-up-the-strip/

       • Have you tried asking the guy at the gun store?

       • @Cliff H, I’ve been told that there’s been yet another change to NV law. I had to qualify with both revolver and pistol in order to carry both. Now, I’ve been told that you can qualify with either to carry both. Which saves time and money.

         I went back to The Gun Store last week to teach a newbie shooter from California. She liked it a lot. Go to the website at thegunstorelasvegas.com for info. The live chat works great. The address is 2900 East Tropicana.

       • Ralph, I accuse you of First Degree Aggravated Living the Good Life, with special circumstances.

       • @ropingdown, I only go to Las Vegas to visit my money — and may I say that they’re putting every dollar to good use.

         I wish I could say the same about the G.

     • reno is much safer and cheaper than LV

       • Yep.

3. And in other news, the sky is in fact NOT falling.

4. Not surprised by any of this.
   Everybody knows that the crime rate is falling. Everybody knows more and more places are allowing the carry of firearms….

   HMMMMM……
   but seriously what in the nine fvcks is going on in Bridgeport, CT?!

   • We nigh be exposed to this every day, but the majority are not. All they see on the news is one shooting or robbery after another and come to the conclusion that the country is going to hell.

5. Yay Oakland! We’re number 1! (almost)

   • Funny thing about these statistics is that arguably they show that if CCW was really legal in Cali Oakland would be a pretty safe city.

6. It is really not fair to ruin the ant-gun folks’ arguments by bringing in “fact” to this conversation.

   For shame!

   • If you’re ever involved in a “fair” fight, your tactics need work.

7. We have friends in Glastonbury, CT, that believe that self defense is a non-starter and that the police will protect them. Never mind the fact that they walked into a burglary of their home and the perp escaped after they arrived. It was probably an after school teenager, but ir could have ended badly. They follow the progressive line; no high capacity mags, no concealed carry and no “assault rifles” for them.

   You can’t fix stupid.

   • Oh, contraire! You can ‘fix’ stupid. But all of the sure-fire methods are illegal in most “civilized” society. I would also say that you can vote it out, but, that hasn’t been true for a long time.

   • Glastonbury is 93% white, 3% Asian. It has very low crime. Isn’t it just typical of such communities that they begin to think “we don’t need guns. Only the criminals want guns, or people with criminal neighbors. We don’t want them to have guns of the self-defense sort. We do fine just having pair of pheasant guns. ” (People do hunt nearby.) My community was definitely “trap guns and deer rifles good, pistols bad” until desperado types from the city started coming out to burglarize in the last few years. Now it has changed. Soccer moms shot at burglars twice last year. It cheers me.

8. But what do we do when the criminals are in the government?
   http://www.killingmycareer.com/the-sociopathic-business-model/the-irs-wins-373-million-more-line-dancing/

   • http://www.fairtax.org

9. 7% of rape perps were relatives of the victims? Ewwww! Even if we’re talking in-laws or third cousins twice removed (and I’m not even really sure what that means), still ewwww!

   As for 38% of rape perps being friends/acquaintances, well, anyone who would rape you is not a true friend.

   That 1 in 20 male victimization rate must include, probably predominate, prison populations, no?

   • I was a juror on a trial for a guy who’d raped his wife’s sister.

     After we convicted him, we found out he had also been convicted of raping his sister. The two rapes earned him life without parole. What was also creepy though is that the rape victim’s mom sided with the rapist, because she favored the daughter married to him over the victim; the mom preferred that daughter’s dad to the victim’s dad. Ick.

   • I read an estimate that 1 in 9 rapes is male on male, but that men almost never report it. Britain says 3% of men have been raped. 1 in 20 sounds low not counting prison rapes. Don’t get drunk with a guy you don’t know.

   • The numbers from Statistics Brain take from Koss and Gidycz & Wisniewski, and the study all three did in 1987 was flawed enough to later be considered invalid. Koss is the one who came up with the ‘1 in 4 college women are raped’ statistic by using misleading and vague questions. She later admitted the number was closer to something like 1 in 20, but it’s still dredged up from time to time. Anything to get people outraged.
     Rape studies that count ‘unreported’ rapes shouldn’t really be trusted, how the hell do you count rapes that were never reported in the first place? It’s always a hypothesis, not a solid number.
     Anyhow, rape with the meaning ‘forced intercourse’ is rarely used as the standard definition for studies, and men who are forced into sex are often excluded from questioning or categorized into less serious ‘sexual assault’.

     On top of everything, men simply report it less, or have it counted off as some lesser charge when they do report it.

   • Aren’t husbands relatives?

10. Orlando doesn’t appear a single time on that chart. Guess I can stop carrying a gun now.

11. I’m curious about the political party in charge of each of those cities. Most are obvious, but there are several I’m unsure of.

    • You can probably make a pretty safe bet. . .

    • I just looked it up. They Mayor of 14 of the 15th deadliest cities is a Democrat, with the exception of Kansas City, MO, who is independent.

      NY – Bill de Blasio – Democrat (D, communist)
      Chicago – Rahm Emanuel – (D, former Obama WHCOS)
      Detroit – Mike Duggan (D)
      Philadelphia – Michael Nutter (D)
      L.A. – Eric Garcetti (D)
      New Orleans – Mitch Landrieu (D)
      Houston – Annise Parker (D)
      Baltimore – Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D)
      Dallas – Mike Rawlings (D)
      Memphis – A. C. Wharton (D)
      Phoenix – Greg Stanton (D)
      St. Louis – Francis G. Slay (D)
      D.C. – Vincent Gray (D)
      Kansas City – Sly James (I)
      Oakland – Jean Quan (D)

12. What’s interesting to see is that high-crime cities are not exactly exclusive to Slave States (i.e. states that have enacted the more onerous gun control laws than others have), and although crime is generally (and even then only slightly) higher overall in the South East U.S., there are far and away more crime-ridden Hell-Holes in Slave States.

    • See the research that “J” did above.

13. Ob joy. I live halfway between Detroit and Flint. But I guess its better than living in either…

14. Wow, what’s the deal with Sweden? They’re 3rd in rapes behind 2 3rd world countries! Anyone know what the deal is there?

    • I’m not Swedish, but since the age of 25 I’ve spent five or six half-years there and perhaps 18 summers, many shorter trips. Sweden has a reputation for treating women well with child care support and so forth. However, the culture of aggression and drinking is very much alive. Swedish courts have an even worse rape conviction record than UK courts, so very few women report rape. If the raped woman had a few drinks, a conviction is much less likely. And so forth. In other words the real number is almost certainly even higher. A large part of the contemporary “social welfare and equality” society for which Sweden is famous was brought about by mass reaction to the culture they had 80 or 90 years ago. Until you’ve lived among the Swedish upper class, you haven’t seen arrogance. As for sex, it was the norm until the 1950’s (guessing a bit here) for men to avoid marriage until they knew a child was on the way. A Swede of the old school would tell you, however, that the rape rate is all the fault of the asylum-seeking immigrants from North Africa. That isn’t the whole truth, but it is certainly part of the truth, especially around Malmö and southern Stockholm.

      • I’m sure it has nothing to do with their immigration policies.

      • It would be interesting to see the rape statistics broken down per municipality.

        • “It would be interesting to see the rape statistics broken down per municipality.”

          That, and a sort of gun-freedom index for the same areas, and a cross-correlation, not that correlation has anything to do with causation. 😉

        • I googled “rape statistics by city” without the quotes and this was the third hit:
          http://www.city-data.com/crime/

          Gun control might take some thought because different places have different laws with different levels and types of infringements.

          So never mind my other post.

    • If I remember from the Julian Assang (sp?) story, Sweden has some pretty odd rape laws. What starts out as consensual sex can become rape if the gal says stop even in the middle of the ole’ “in/out, in/out” and the guy doesn’t immediately stop.

      • That’s the law anywhere. I think you just told us a lot about yourself.

        • Judhead is right. Nonetheless, it seems strange to lump these “started consensual but changed her mind half way through” cases in the same category as the “stranger rape” or even the “forcible date rate” cases.

      • I’ve said for decades that we need another word for some rapes, since the wide range of definitions currently dilutes the impact of the charge. Pardon my political incorrectness, I’m suggesting another term for (still illegal) actions which are not “REAL” rape, ie, beaten half to death, threatened with a knife or gun, BY A STRANGER, without warning or cooperation, no chance to escape, drugged, you get the idea. As opposed to “went on date, got stinkin’ drunk, wound up in his bed in the morning” or “he was my boss and threatened my job”. Still should be illegal, but not the heinous crime called “rape”.

        Fire away, I’m ducking now!

        • I wonder if “Gee, we got drunk and I woke up in her bed” would be an effective defense against one of those morning-after “rapes?”

          Of course, the way to avoid being charged with that kind of “rape” is to not boink women who are too drunk to know what they’re doing. And if you have to get a woman so drunk that she doesn’t know what she’s doing in order to get a little, then you don’t deserve to get any anyway.

    • Rape “statistics” have to be taken with a gain of salt. Its probably true that a high number don’t get reported. Its also true that many reported rapes end up being BS. Saw if happen a lot when I was in the military. One guy got reported by a female soldier for “rape” because he didn’t pull out when climaxing, as she had requested. Another gal reported a consensual sex incident as “rape” in order to save face with her boyfriend. The military adds these types of incidents to the “official numbers,” but doesn’t go back and re-tally the numbers once these fraudulent cases are exposed. Also, how countries report rape statistics varies widely, so there is really no point in comparing and contrasting statistics from one country to another.

    • Remember their Viking heritage (which I also share through Norwegian ancestors) – and have you seen Swedish women? We have a lot of Swedish and Danish tourists in NZ. Go to the beach and they will have a naked shower at the back of their camper vans. Quite a sight (I of of course always avert my gaze). The level of temptation must be immense.

15. The study says race isn’t a factor, and then claims the victims of murder are split 50/50, between blacks and whites. Am I missing something?

    • If you can’t math it makes perfect sense.

    • Depends on how you look at it, race very well does matter unfortunately, but it’s a problem they choose to ignore by equating it between the solid numbers of black and white persons homicides. I will say this though, as I play the numbers game too, that a quote that has always stuck with me is: “Figures don’t lie, but liars do figure.” A double edged sword of a meaning, if you will.

      Race doesn’t seem to matter–
      6,830–white
      7,380–black

      But break that into per 100,000 (using their reported numbers above and the 2010 U.S. Census)

      White: roughly 3 per 100,000
      Black: roughly 19 per 100,000

      It’s a nastier number most aren’t willing to admit since it treads into “racism” as the media knows it. There is a culture problem sadly, and it seems like the Dems perpetuate it so they can forever appeal to the sentiments of their constituents they claim to represent. There are a lot of numbers and sources to factor into it. I don’t have the time to go through their citation and see where exactly that number comes from (Are these intentional homicides? Do they include unintentional? Suicides? What race is the murderer and what race is the victim? Etc. etc.) Again, figures don’t lie, but… it depends on what perspective you want to choose to view it in if you play with numbers and sources enough, or in their case, not at all.

      • During one of the recent feeding frenzys, I watched reporter/personality Juan Williams (black) report all this and also that the huge majority of the killers of all those young black men were, themselves, young black men, before whining that we should DO something about gun control, suggesting background checks like a mantra.

        Nobody challenged him, so I don’t know if he ever figured out that he had formed an irrefutable argument for a law prohibiting blacks from owning firearms, period, and advocated it on national TV. Would such a realization change such a person’s mind about what he is blindly advocating?

        • Mental addictions to ideologies can be even harder to break than physical addictions to things like drugs or bad relationships. Nobody with that condition changes until they hit rock bottom.

      • It’s entirely the fault of the insane, illegal, immoral, unconstitutional war on drugs. That little piece of hell on Earth wasis so flagrantly racist that they didn’t even try to hide it!
        youtu.be/wONAqaxgIoo

16. That 1 in 5 chance of a woman suffering rape or attempted rape in a given year is utter bullshit. Given that DoJ stats say that half of rape victims are under 18, that means a kid has over a 50% chance of someone trying to rape her every year. Horseshit. There is no way in Hell that an average high school of 500 kids has 125 attempted rape victims in it every year.

    • Yeah, but Eric Holder is in charge of DoJ, I don’t trust anything coming out of that criminal cesspool until he is gone.

17. (EDITED: I can’t tell if you wrote the article and the data are from the linked source or not. 😉 )

    That’s an informative article, Dan, and I was enjoying reading it until I read, “expansion of concealed carry rights.” Ugh.

    If we had to have a license to exercise our right of free speech or practice of the religion of our choice, I would hope that people wouldn’t accept that as the exercise of a right. (I’m referencing the simple exercising of a right and not the commission of a crime while exercising it.)

    Improper use of right in place of privilege is deleterious to the maintenance and restoration of that right. People new to the concept of unalienable rights may not fully appreciate those rights if we elevate mere privilege to the status of right in our manners of speech. Those already informed might get in the habit of settling for a privilege in place of a right. And, future generation may look back at writings in an attempt to define the RKBA “back then”; perhaps even for court briefs and arguments (isn’t this done in the present day?).

18. Does anyone else notice something odd about the rape perpetrator pie chart? Most of the categories are a description of “who” the perpetrator is. But one (“raped to intimidate”) is more of a “why” the rapist raped and could be a subset of any of the other categories.

    Also, the weapons categories are a bit odd with some possible overlap.

    The race breakdown is suspect as well.

19. Coincidentaly if you put gas in your car, it seems to run.hmmm must just be a coincedence.Conceal carry andcrime reduction ? Whst sre you kidding me? No Way! Can’t be true! You mean we arrogant Ignorant to firearms liberals are wrong????? Hmmmm….Well then let’s just continue to fabricate facts! Ya that will work! We”ll just keep doing what has always worked!
    A

20. It is very difficult to obtain a handgun license in NZ, and you can NEVER carry a weapon on your person. Saying that, I have never felt in peril of my life no matter where I have gone in this country. Even criminals and gang bangers are fairly harmless unless you rip them off or don’t pay for your drugs. In many instances any aggression on my part could have had untoward consequences. We don’t appear to have the sort of blitz attack robbers you have. There are still handguns around, but mostly in criminal hands. Don’t do stupid things with stupid (read drunk) people, in stupid places, and generally you should get back home in one piece.

21. And if you listen to the pants-wetting terror of the NRA we all need to buy MOAR GUNS RIGHT NOW!!!! or the drug gangs and criminals and terry-wrists will murder us all in our beds. But then, the NRA has become little more than a marketing arm for the the firearms industry. Everything is a clarion call to buy as many guns as you possibly can right away because someone will kill you if you don’t.

Comments are closed.