Fighting back: Victim weapon use and subsequent assault and injury

The type of weapon used in self-defense has been shown in previous research to differ whether an assault is completed and whether a victim will sustain an injury. That is, firearms tended to reduce the likelihood of an assault being completed and the victim incurring injuries. Knives and other weapons produced an increase in both assault completion and victim injury. Victims' use of bodily force increased the completion of assaults and consistently produced the highest level of minor injuries. Previous research, however, has not thoroughly examined the disparity between the type of weapon used by the victim and by the offender. For this dissertation, the characterization of this disparity was in terms of coercive power and bilateral deterrence theories. A person's physical size or selection of weapon may determine whether one person can convince another person to comply with his or her will. This paper employed the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to examine: (a) the consequences of a victim's active resistance in terms of a completed assault given a threat and of the level of injury sustained by the victim given a completed assault; and (b) the effect of the disparity in the victim's and the offender's weapon use on the same outcome measures. Although the multivariate analyses were plagued with colinearity problems and an insufficient number of cases, several interesting bivariate relationships were noted. Overall, the victim's use of an active resistance strategy was found to reduce the completion of assaults. Interestingly, the self-defensive use of firearms proved not to be the expected "equalizer" for female victims faced with male offenders. These active resistance strategies, however, did not determine the level of victim injury. Finally, the use of coercive power and bilateral deterrence theories appeared to effectively capture the relationship between the offender and victim weapon use and completed assaults. Instrumentality effects based on the offender's weapon use was more applicable to predicting the level of injury. The results are further discussed in terms of its application to public policy issues and the direction for future research.