Firearms Training

The Truth About the Latest Report on Household Crime

July 9th, 2006  

In 2002, 19,855,490 households in the U.S. experienced one or more violent crimes or property crimes. That represents 18% of the 110,323,640 households in the United States. These crimes include rape, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated and simple assault, purse snatching and pocket picking, household burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, and vandalism. This is per the latest report, Crime and the Nation’s Households, put out by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in February 2004.

Of those almost 20 million households experiencing violent crime, 3.2% had a family member age 12 or older who experienced a crime of violence. That is 3,520,360 families in 2002 alone that had someone in their household sexually assaulted, raped, robbed, assaulted with a weapon, or threatened with injury.

Recognize that in this particular report methodology the U.S. Department of Justice is only recording one incident of a particular violent crime per family. If a family had two rapes that year, this report is only counting it as one. If a family was assaulted say four times, it is still only counted as one assault for that family. So you can see that these 3.5 million households had more than 3.5 million episodes of violent crime. The exact number, however, has not been established in this report, but it is most certainly significantly higher.

Incidentally, this particular Justice Department report does not include murders in the above statistics. Murders are counted by the Government in a whole different process of statistical evaluation. But suffice to say, the ever-increasing murder count will push up the numbers of households victimized, and the violent criminal actions per household even higher. Look for our report coming out soon in this Newsletter on the truth about murder in the U.S.

Now, we have the matter of property crime with households. In the U.S. in 2002, 16,335,130 families were victims of at least one serious property crime that year. That is 14.8% of all households in the U.S. This includes household burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, and vandalism. Again, if your home was burglarized three times that year, it only counts as one time in this report. And if your home was vandalized nine times, it too only counts as one time in this Government report. Clearly, the numbers of incidence of serious property crime in the U.S. are considerably higher.

What if a household was burglarized, a vehicle was stolen from the garage, money was stolen from inside the home, and the house was vandalized, all within the same incident? This would be reported and counted as only one burglary by the Government. Because the burglary was the major crime, the accompanying criminal activities would not be identified and reported specifically in statistical analysis.

Similarly, what if a household member was assaulted, tied up, robbed and raped within the same incident? In this report only the greater crime, most likely the rape, would be counted.

Another key point is that crimes against children under the age of 12 years are not counted in this report. Yet approximately one-third of all sexual assaults occur to children under the age of 12.

Also, keep in mind that this report only covers households. It does not report on property crimes to businesses, such as burglaries, robberies, vandalism and the like, which typically push up serious property crimes by about 50% above household statistics.

So, when we look at this latest, just-released-last-month-report from the Justice Department, and we see that 18% of all U.S. households have been victims of serious crime, we need to understand, however, that the actual number of incidents of serious criminal victimization in America is sizably higher. These minimalized numbers get reported to the press, who do not take the initiative to dig deep enough to really understand the actual state of criminal activity to which we Americans are subjected.

Households in urban areas were hit hardest by incidence of crime, with 19% of families experiencing some form of criminal victimization in 2002. In Suburban areas, 13.3% of households were hit with crime in 2002. And in rural areas, 10.9% of homes were hit with victimization.

The Western states lead with the highest volume of households being victimized, with a total of 19.1% of homes hit. That is over 21 million families experiencing severe criminal attack. In the Midwest 14.3% of households had members who were victims of crime. In the Southern states, 13.6% of homes were victimized. And In the Northeast 11.4% of households experienced at least one incident of severe crime.

The numbers below are given to us by the Justice Department as one-time-crimes per household. In reality, the number of actual crimes will be sizably higher. For example, rape and sexual assault incidents this year will exceed by double the amounts reported below.

• 9.9% of homes, over 10,000,000 households, will have a family member who falls prey to theft this year.
• 4.9% of homes, over 5,000,000 households, will be vandalized this year.
• 2.8% of homes, over 3,000,000 households, will have a family member who is assaulted this year.
• 2.4% of homes, over 2,000,000 households, will be burglarized this year.
• 0.8% of homes, over 900,000 households, will have their vehicles stolen this year.
• 0.4% of homes, over 400,000 households, will have a family member who will be robbed this year.
• 0.2% of homes, over 200,000 households, will have a family member who will be sexually assaulted or raped this year.

One out of 25 families will sustain personal violence by a stranger, or burglarized invasion of their home this year. Are you prepared to ensure your family members or home will not be one of those targeted?

Experts say that 98% of crime is premeditated. That means that you can in almost all cases deter a criminal act from happening to you, and other members of your family. But to swing these odds in your favor you must be properly trained in how to thwart potential criminals. And for those other 2%, well you had better be prepared. Your life and that of your loved ones should be trusted only to the very best personal safety and self defense training available. And that means Front Sight Firearms Training Institute.

Front Sight will train you to reach a higher level of skill than you ever thought possible in firearms handling, edged weapons defense, and empty-hands defense. Precisely the skills you need to deal with any possible criminal confrontation.

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