Someone needs a refresher course in basic math.

I bow to no man (or woman) regarding my detestation of the act of rape. My wife is a rape victim, and if the assholes involved ever show up here looking to get even because she prosecuted them, they’ll get a little further 12-gauge justice from me.
However, there is a statistic going around that is just dead fucking wrong.
Apparently today is “Wear Teal Day”, which is supposed to show support for rape victims. On the Facebook page for this event, it is stated: “Every 2 minutes, someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted. I think ‘It’s Time to Get Involved!'”
Hmm. Every two minutes?
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm gives rape statistics for 1960-2009. At no point do rapes go over 109,060 for a year, and that was clear back in 1992. The trend line appears to be decreasing ever since, with 89,000 rapes reported in 2009 and another little mini-peak in 2002 of 95,235.
A rape every two minutes (and I’m assuming “rape”==”sexual assault” because the statistics don’t make a distinction) would be 262,800 rapes per year.
Not to be pedantic, but unless there has been some massive increase in rapine in this country, the real statistic, based on the 2009 number, is more like a rape every 6 minutes. Even at peak in 1992 it works out to only one every 4.8 minutes.
Again: I think rape is a crime committed by savages, and the correct punishment for a rapist is to hang him in the public square. But I am tired of bogus statistics being thrown about to raise false consciousness about a problem that affects 0.03% of the US population (that’s 3 in 10,000) annually.
[9:40AM: PS: I calculated based on a round 300,000,000 population. I missed the total population number in the stat sheet, which in 2009 was 307,006,550. So the true “rapes per hour” number is even lower than I calculated.
Also, as I think back, I believe the “mini-peak” in 1992 might have been due to more date rapes being reported on college campuses — as I seem to recall there was a fuss about that when I was working at IUPUI around that time. The question, of course, then being raised as to how many of those were actual rapes and how many were morning-after regrets being reported as rapes. Heather MacDonald wrote an excellent article about this phenomenon in City Journal back in late 2008.]