United States – (AmmoLand.com)- Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz recently told a rally that rape soared in Australia after gun confiscation. The anti-gun left jumped into full swing to discredit this candidate’s comments. I read some of the most bizarre and inventive discussions as to why the candidate HAD to be making it up. The Washington Post gave the statement four Pinocchios. Dear Anti-gunners…Not liking a statement does not make it untrue. So below are two tables, once showing the RISE in rapes in Australia from 1997 to 2007. The other shows the drop in rapes in the US. No spin just facts . . .
Rapes in Australia – 1995 to 2007, the source, is the Australian Institute of Criminology:
The following table is of crime in the U.S., including rape and murders, the source if the FBI unified crime report. The rapes are in BLUE:
The simple fact is that Australia had a massive gun confiscation and rapes increased by half or more over the next decade. The US saw a fifty percent drop in rapes while the number of guns owned by American doubled. A woman in Australia is now four times more likely to be sexually assaulted than in the US.
[ED: Here’s a relevant quote from the WaPo Fact Checking article. “All we can really say is that after the buyback, there were increases in sexual assault overall,” said Samara McPhedran, senior research fellow at Griffith University in Australia and chair of the International Coalition of Women in Shooting and Hunting. “However, the available information does not enable us to draw inferences about whether there is any connection between the two events.”]
Twenty-five years ago I had a beer with a retiring Sheriff. He told me that kidnapping a girl was the price of initiation for the local gangs. The younger and prettier the better. No one wants to think about what happened to her in the week or so they held her before her body was found. Strapped for manpower and with a code of silence bottling up any leads, the LEOs put up ads in the local papers, in English and Spanish, announcing they passing out CCWs to women. Classes were announced and Refuse to be a Victim courses were scheduled.
Before a single permit was issued the local gangs stopped the kidnappings. The fear that a woman might have a gun was enough to change the actions of the criminals. So buy a gun, learn how to use it and store it safely, add to your own protections. Our Law Enforcement are the bravest and most selfless men and women we have. But they cannot be everywhere at once.
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About Don McDougall:
Don McDougall is an NRA instructor and member of the Los Padres “Friends of the NRA” committee. If he’s not at the range you will find him setting the record straight with on gun issues and gun safety on AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.
hah i did this same analysis a while back and found their rate of rape did increase.
however i was also sure to point out that Australians have always seemed to like themselves some rape so establishing causation is dubious at best.
but it is factually correct to say “Rape increased after the gun ban”
Whether Australian culture has a higher propensity to rape or not, doesn’t excuse the fact that the rate was going up during that time – especially since violent crime (regardless of gun policies) has been dropping in all developed countries during that same time. You could only come to two conclusions, either the Australian appetite for rape itself is increasing or the absence of guns is increasing the opportunities and incentives for rape. I doubt very seriously it is the former.
I was going to make almost the same point: correlation does not mean causation. It is factually correct to say that rapes increased after the gun ban. It, however, is not established that gun confiscation LED to a rise in rape. It is possible that the gun confiscation was a factor, but it is not proven.
I like the high road, and I think we should try to stick to it as much as possible. I suspect that Cruz simply didn’t pick his words quite carefully enough, but that doesn’t mean we should pretend that he said something he didn’t, just for political expediency.
The problem with the high road, in this case, is that it’s essentially impassible. Look, unless you’re willing to design and conduct a full factorial experiment with replication, randomization and local control of error, then any statistical inference is going to be compromised right from the start.
For those less versed in stats, what I’m talking about here is being able to zero in on the factor of interest (gun availability), manipulate it to observe its impact on the response variable (rape rates), and exclude everything else so that you know your Cause is the only cause possible for the Effect you witnessed. Well.
That’s challenging enough with small scale experiments in laboratory settings with inanimate subjects. It’s impossible with a country. So demanding absolute accuracy in language regarding a point which itself cannot be absolutely proven is more than a little pedantic.
Political speech intrinsically carries pages of implied disclaimers. So it’s sufficient for Cruz to point out A and B and invite the listener to use his own common sense whether to agree with Cruz’s conclusion as to A having caused B. Handing out “Pinocchios” for this is ludicrous.
+1
It is apparent that the general public is mildly to severely stupid/lazy when eating up these sound bites. Everything is a loophole, everything needs MOAR regulation and MOAR government! Well, guess what? The Australian gov’t banning guns and having the police protect their citizenry has not yielded the desired crime reduction results.
Drop in homicide? Statistically flat
Drop in rapes? No
Drop in assaults? No
Drop in overall violent crime? No
But of course the answer is MOAR government and MOAR laws. And let’s jail people for having airsoft guns because common sense! Then they say we’re being unreasonable and we won’t compromise. My response: [SENSORED/DELETED]!!@!!!111!!!!
Well here is some more correlation for you – corresponds over some 30yrs of a huge influx of Islamist/moslems into Oz. There is NO doubt they really really be liken them some rape. See Sydney Gang Rape.
But it’s not a crime if target is a non Moslem (or a young boy of any religion). Religion of (a) piece.
Scenario: Guns are confiscated. “Bad guys” and law enforcement are the only ones with guns, for the most part. Do you not think the “bad guys” are going to be a bit bolder in their attempts at home invasions and rapes AFTER the gun confiscations? Of course they are going to take advantage of the new amount of victims they have been given! It would be foolish not to admit to this. In the event that there is a home invasion or an attempted rape, what if the intended victim tries and successfully protects herself by killing the assailant? What would happen to her if this were in America? Now, adding a twist, what would happen to a woman who protected herself from the same scenario in Australia?
From what i remember,
murder was decreasing before the gun ban and continued the same trend
rape was increasing before the gun ban and continued the same trend
its like the gun ban had no material effect on anything….as if other factors are far more important in determining levels of criminal activity
“… its like the gun ban had no material effect on anything….as if other factors are far more important in determining levels of criminal activity …”
And that is the best possible, possibly truthful statement that any gun-grabber could ever claim.
Just like liberal CCW laws, even *gasp* Constitutional Carry, have not been shown to increase crime. It’s a true statement and the other side can’t refute it with corralation/=causation.
Actually I recently checked on this. I can’t recall if it was violent crime overall or homicide I checked (it was quick and dirty for a face book argument) but both the uk and oz were experiencing the start of the early 90’s crime drop and both countries had a hump in their stats which seemed to be proportional in steepness to the strictness of enforcement of their gun bans.
The takeaway I had was that both countries experienced the same decreasing trend as the test of the industrialized world, but a jump up to a higher but parallel downward track followed their gun control laws.
The one thing u can be sure of though is that the victims of any violent crime were far less likely to be able to defend themselves post gun grab.
Exactly! There may be a zero correlation between the gun confiscation and increase in violent crime, but you remove a citizen’s ability to defend themselves against a violent offender, you provide an incentive for evil and evil doers. An armed society is a (more) polite society.
If banning guns had no material effect and the trends just continued as they were previously then why ban them at all? they are either linked or not linked. pick one. stick to it.
Violent UK: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/5712573/UK-is-violent-crime-capital-of-Europe.html
The real question is, do we care about gun violence and gun crime and gun murder, or do we care about crime and violent crime and murder? All of these places that banned and confiscated guns can rightly claim reductions in gun violence/crime/murder, but they all saw immediate and continuing increases in overall rates of violence, crime, and murder, including home invasions, rape, property crime, violent robbery, etc. Still, the anti-gun crowd cheers these examples on as gun control success stories, because all they care about are the guns. No matter if people are actually worse off and at higher danger than before.
Causation or no, rapes did not decrease under the ban.
So since we are playing causation and correlation, one could make the statement that liberal activism (the gun grab) increased rape in AUS, and ergo, liberals empower the rape of women. Good job lefties, bet you’re feeling good about yourselves now.
Nah. Progressives only claim causation when it fits their narrative. If it is good for our narrative, then they claim correlation.
Or they ignore the data completely.
Gun-grabbers do that as well.
The truth hurts a great deal when you hear it from a conservative republican like Ted Cruz. Keep talking Mr Cruz. You are pising the correct people off.
I remember the story of the Australian grandmother whose granddaughter was raped by two men. Having kept her handgun illegally during the confiscation she did some sleuthing, found both of those men and let’s just say removed the tools of the rapist’s trade with some well placed rounds. Then turned herself and her gun in to local police. They did of course have to arrest her, but given the huge outpouring of support prosecutors didn’t dare bring charges against her.
Sometimes a good grandma with a gun stops bad guys with, er, yeah.
Yeah, that story is just an urban legend. If I recall correctly, when people tried to track it down they found out it originated in the “Weekly World News” tabloid, home of alien abductions and Bat Boy.
Entertaining story, but not a word of it is true.
“Boy Trapped in Refrigerator, Eats Own Foot”
WWN was some funny stuff
Yeah, well, hey, but I believe it anyway, because guns. If they can do it, so can I!
I do wonder if we can get the fact-check people to check this article … and themselves. They can’t both be right.
These are the same people who said that Cruz was lying when he quoted DiFi saying that she would confiscate American’s guns if she could and proved it by providing a video of her saying exactly what Cruz said she did, word for word……
You know you’re comparing flat numbers with a per-100k rate, right?
Going by that table and the population increase in Australia, the RATE of rape hasn’t really gone up, even though the raw numbers have.
If you’re going to use statistics, use them honestly.
Yeah, I am just noticing that..so the claim is a non-starter from the get go.
Cruz is a politician, and that is still more honest than most everything we hear from politicians. I doubt guns have much effect on rapes in the US, either, since the huge majority of women apparently believe they don’t need the evil things, and once you’ve been raped it is kinda too late to tool up, unless you are a dynomyte babe and expect many more rapes in your life. Only place I ever heard of violent action against a rapist was a dead man found in a park in Richmond, VA, in the ’60s, with a hatpin through the brain, as what was apparently the last chapter in a year-long string of rapes of dozens of college girls. The police never found the killer.
You’re charts up there don’t make a valid comparison. The graph for Australia shows the absolute number of rapes, while the graph for the USA shows the rate per 100,000. Once you convert the Australia graph to rate also, the difference is nowhere near as drastic. Also, it continues an increase in reports of rape and sexual assault that pre-dated the gun confiscation in ’96. Australia banned carry for self defense prior to ’96, and a miniscule proportion of the Australian population owned firearms at all. The impact of the law was on target shooters and hobbyists, not on people carrying for self defense.
I see no evidence that their gun confiscation had a meaningful impact on their crime rate, one way or the other.
When I reviewed the Australian figures from the government website, before and after the gun confiscation, there was a rise in murder immediately after. It held for a few years and then declined similarly to other western countries. So directly after the confiscation, crime does appear to rise, before falling. While in that same time, the U.S. saw a decline in murder without creating more restrictive gun laws.
Looking here: http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html
The gun confiscation effort ran in 1996 and 1997. In 1998, their reported number of homicides was down. Increase in 1999, then back down to 1997 levels in 2000. I can’t find an official site with their rate per 100,000 over those years, and am too lazy to do my own math on it, but they had population growth over those years, so even the apparent spike may in reality be flat once converted. A one year drop and a one year spike are both insignificant in the overall trend. So I’m going to stand by my original statement of “no meaningful impact.”
Politicians can and will change charts or graphs to protect their own agendas. There is an old saying you might want to pay heed to…” Figures don’t lie, but liars figure! “
I was about to make exactly the same point. It is not a fair comparison to show absolute numbers in one graph and compare it to a rate chart. They do not show the same comparison.
It is probably true that the Washington Post fact checker screwed up (they actually do that or go into wild contortions to arrive at the conclusion they want), but our side should not be giving them ammo (pun intended) by engaging in false comparisons in the same way they do.
Aside from that, you really need to look at it at the period before 1996-7 to make meaningful conclusions about causation. If it was rising at the same rate for many years before the ban, then the ban is not what caused the rise.
So much FAIL.
The first chart is the overall occurrence of rape in Australia — it is NOT a per capita chart. Very basic error there!
The second chart of the US is a per capita! (Sian also points this out).
If you were to bother to do a bit more research you would see the actual per capita RATE of rape in Australia HAS RECENTLY GONE DOWN!
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Rape-rate
If you actually looked at the Australian gov’t website, you’d see that the rate of rape is back to the 1996 levels:
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime.html
I would be very reluctant to accept any statistical analysis done by any anti-gun government source, unfortunately this includes the entire Australian government. In the US there has been an ongoing fight with highly political Left Wing operatives to prevent them from using powerful government entities in law enforcement and health care agencies to corrupt the source data we depend on.
The gang initiation story is complete BS, the kind of thing that gets passed around in chain emails nowadays.
Yeah, I’d like to know where this retiring sheriff was from. Seems like it would be easy enough to determine if there had been a rash of kidnapped and murdered girls in that area 25+ years ago. Also, were CCWs even an option at that time in that location? It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that states really began rolling back concealed carry laws.
Yes sir. Australia has seen about a 45% increase in rape since their firearm confiscation. The United States has seen about a 17% decrease in rape over the same time period … while firearms ownership and concealed carry licenses have increased dramatically (on the order of 25% to 50%).
Facts are stubborn things.
Update:
According to commenters above, the Australian rape graph was not a rate per X inhabitants and adjusting the graph to reflect rape rate would indicate a flat rate of rape in Australia between 1996 and 2007.
In other words the rape rate in Australia did not change after the gun grab. Contrast that with the rape rate in the United States over the same time period that actually decreased about 17% while firearms ownership and concealed carry licenses increased dramatically.
I’ll just say Australian men are probably the most randy on the planet. I know because one tried it on me. Didn’t work out for him. I’m not a gently raised cupcake, I was taught to fight back with teeth, finger nails, knee to Mr. Happy & the boys
If the guy is already on top of you, biting down on lower lip is very effective. Let’s just say, he needed to put some ice on his lip & I got the hell out of his apartment.
One Australian boy tried to pick you up and you kneed him in the nuts. Where exactly does this anecdote of yours sit statistically in the gun debate? (Hint – nowhere, sweetheart)
I had the same reaction when i saw the two graphs, but the statement of Cruz holds up when you look at population. I respond to Robert’s article and the comments to it here:
http://lawnews.tv/ted-cruz-australian-gun-confiscation-led-to-a-rise-in-rape-true-story-the-truth-about-guns/
What was that about lies and statistics…?
1) The two charts are showing different years and different statistics- you can’t just put them up as if the can be compared, but that’s exactly what is being done.
2) It’s interesting how “1995-2007” is selected for the Australian chart. Why that specific range? Maybe because it only tells the desired story. If it had selected “1990-2012” what would the story be? Well, first, rape has gone down in the years since 2012. Are Aussies tooling up with guns again? If not, there must be something else at play. And I also suspect the rise in rape didn’t start magically in 1995 but began beforehand, which means the attempted correlation between gun laws and the crime falls apart.
As is the case with so many articles, posts, arguments, etc. in gun politics, everyone needs to remember that correlation does not equal causation. Lets all repeat it now: correlation does not equal causation. The key word progressives will attack Cruz over is “led.”
By simply looking at statistics, you could argue that the fact that Australia has more cane toads now and less snakes “led” to more rape if you accept correlation as causation. Further detailed research must be done to see if correlated data influences one another.
“Our Law Enforcement are the bravest and most selfless men and women we have. But they cannot be everywhere at once.”
What is brave about law enforcement writing reports of criminal activity. What is brave about lying during a traffic stop and circumventing a citizens 4A during a drug interdiction stop? LEO’s see the results of crime everyday. Assult, murder, rape, and robbery…yet they rarely speak out and advocate for armament of citizens.
The bravery award goes to the armed citizen, the person a criminal and legislator fears most. A criminal fears for his life and a legislator because when a citizen takes control of ones’ life, not much left for a bureaucrat to do.
The data are missing important components.
The rape numbers are absolute, not per capita.
Also, what is the largest age group in Australia? Is the youngest age group the largest at the beginning of the dates described on the chart? Think of the snake that eats a rat, over time, the rat travels from the front of the snake to the back. The bulk of crimes are committed by teenagers and young adults who have lower accountability and less social control.
While I think 4 Pinocchios is a little harsh, “caused by” is an unsupportable conclusion.
The most you can say, with any statistical rigor, is: Guns were confiscated; rapes went up;therefore the draconian gun confiscation laws did not lead a reduction in rape.
I like statistics, and no, you can’t even say that. You still have no evidence that rapes would not have climbed even higher and faster were it not for the wonderful government saving them from all those evil guns.
Just remember folks, fencesitters see a graph, take it a face value and move on, vote and hurry home for American “idle”. Lots of you may not like how the graphs are presented. I wish the graphs were apples-to-apples too. Gun grabbers and stat purists are the only ones doing the soul searching over graphs so its not a big deal to me.
Do you also not care when gun-grabbers use misleading and dishonest graphs and statistics to push their agenda? If it’s okay for our side to do it, is it okay for them to do it?
Grabbers are not going to stop grabbing just because Model 31 wishes it. The fencesitters that heard Cruz aren’t thinking about it anymore. The people still talking about it already have an agenda and will not be swayed by a graph of which they disagree. There are about four groups of people with a problem about Cruz’s statement.
1. Stat purists – those that hate statistical abuse…likely a disappointed lot
2. Cruz haters…
3. Fans of another political candidate
4. Gun Grabbers
Where these four set in a venn diagram, I’d expect the overlap would be huge and it would be the best diagram you’ve ever seen.
I’m not a Cruz hater, but I do expect a major candidate for POTUS to do a bit more homework before making such a proclamation. I haven’t noticed his firearms freedom bona fides being questioned, anyhow, there was no hurry to take on the grabbers.
It’s not about swiggles on a G Dam graph. The fact that people on both sides consider a graph in a discussion of lawful self protection lacks precision in the discussion.
Promoting gun control is verbose dogma without relevance to citizens lawfully protecting themselves.
…
As Germany, Sweden, France, and much of the rest of Europe are now discovering, demography has consequences.
What’s the fastest growing religion in Australia?
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/06/25/whats-fastest-growing-religion-australia
From 1996 to 2011 Australia’s Muslim population increased from 201,000 to 476,000
“But while the growth rate of Australia’s Muslim population has outpaced that of our total population, Islam is not the fastest growing religion in Australia. The latest census figures show that Hinduism is the fastest growing religion here, which coincides with the growth in the number of Australians born in India.”
Muslims flooding into Australia by illegal boat entry
We are allowing, indeed attracting, a huge group of unskilled Muslim immigrants who have not been chosen by government policy or process. If it follows even remotely the European pattern, this group will be characterised by high unemployment, inter generational welfare dependency, high crime rates, social problems across a broad spectrum and a minority tendency to extremism.
http://australian-news.net/articles/view.php?id=130
“Diversity is our Strength”
Jus’ sayin’
…
“Islam is not the fastest growing religion in Australia. The latest census figures show that Hinduism is the fastest growing religion here”
What is the fastest growing murderous religion?
Yup, the India connection…another country with ‘a bit’ of a rape problem, for many of the same reasons (few guns/knives as defense tools, and an unchecked ammoral culture of dehumanizing collectivism)
I don’t see anything horribly dramatic. It’s hard to say in a mostly homogenous country with mostly white folks. And a tiny population/huge land mass. They DO have nice beaches… I guess in OZ it’s the price of public safety/for the children BS. But I also see YET ANOTHER reason to vote TED CRUZ for president(or the supremes). But screw the VP.
Plenty of people available for VP. Cruz should fill AG until there’s an opening on SC.
This.
Australia is far less homogenous than the USA is. Some of you hillbillies really need to get out of the little villages you were born in and discover that there’s a big, wide world out here.
Hey Jay-I’m happy being an American hillbilly. And the USA is home to the most ethnically diverse population in the world. NOT the tiny population of OZ. I lived in Chicago neighborhoods with literally dozens of ethnic groups and languages. Indians,Pakis,Palestinians. Polish, Chinese, Thai,Filipino,ad infinitum. Put down that Foster’s-you’re drunk…
Hey Jay-I forgot to mention the Russian gangsters,Ukrainians,many African ethnicities,Mexicans, Brazilians,Saudi Arabians, Egyptians,Croatians,Serbians(who are still feuding),lots of Greeks,Romanians(my ethnic German forebearers came from Transylvania), lots of Haitians,Cubans(our next president), not to mention British,French,German and illegal Irish aplenty. Did I mention I’m an antiques dealer and may know more about the world and it’s denizens than YOU? Have fun…
As mentioned above there has never been carry licenses for firearms in Australia except for some police and security so unlikely to have made any difference.
One of the other theorys is that the number of refugees allowed into the country has increased the rape numbers. Official numbers tend not to give a break down of race and religion. So hard to say
The other thing is in some states to justify budgets almost anything can be called sexual assault. One this week was a male grabbing eight girls while swimming and saying the waves pushed him over. Changed with about 20 things so it looks a lot instead of one drunk and disorderly
I can’t argue stats with folks(don’t have the brains for it). But I got a cousin that was shot to death by a woman he declared he was going to rape and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.
Turns out that shooting a man 6 times in the torso, even a big man like my cousin, with a .38 will cure him of the desire for some strong arm sex. Also cured him of life.
And he was just starting to turn his life around.(His father, my uncle, did a term in prison for rape. Too bad his victim didn’t have a .38)
As many have noted, correlation is not causation, but what we can definitively say is that the gun ban didn’t decrease rapes.
Let’s see this site do a few of its pretty graphs on mass shootings in Australia for a similar period of time. We could even break those graphs down to mass shootings in schools, the streets, and in cinemas. Why are they limiting it to rapes?
Armed robberies went up too, and they had a mass shooting, 5 dead, on September 9, 2014.
This puts a big f**king hole in Comedian Jim Jeffrey’s viral video.
Can’t believe they gave a exaggeration/read-into of a statistical correlation the same rating as “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor (x40)”
Yup, this here’s the Lie of the Year which will appear on Time, meanwhile Bernie’s spouting utter horseshit even faster than Trump, and Hillary’s lies are collapsing like a neutron star into a black hole. What a complete water-carrying rag.
Media reaction to the facts: “NAAH NAAHH NAAAHHH I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”
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