But now the dust has settled, these fraudulent figures have surfaced again, despite the fact that a few moments' thought will show how unsound they remain. Let's start with the every twelve seconds figure. But even without this arithmetical carelessness, the figure still doesn't add up. The total number of violent incidents recorded by the FBI in 1999 was 1,430,693. That's about one every 22 seconds.
Domestic violence is under-reported to the authorities, certainly.
It estimates that there were about 670,000 violent crimes against women by their intimates in 1999. That's one every 47 seconds. That figure has a murky history. It certainly cannot be substantiated properly. Which is why the White House Press Secretary Michael McCurry acknowledged its inadequacy the first time the president used it in March 1995.