Leave it to Toledo to validate the Nazis...

Obviously the march proved a point. And, in my book, it is extremely hard to say a hate group like the Nazis proved a point. Toledo, with the strictest gun-control measures in Ohio, has a long way to go before everyone joins hands and sings. Here are some highlights:

"Protesters at a white supremacists' march threw rocks at police, vandalized vehicles and stores and cursed the mayor for allowing the event." (Yeah, damn the mayor for allowing the right to assemble and speak.)

"Mayor Jack Ford said when he and a local minister tried to calm the rioters Saturday, they were cursed and a masked gang member threatened to shoot him." (Mayor Ford should have been packing, and was obviously one of the few in the crowd who wasn't. Of course, the TPD probably would have confiscated his gun and sent him to community counseling had he been packing.)

"Rioters set fire to 86-year-old Louis Ratajski's neighborhood pub, Jim & Lou's Bar, but he and his nephew escaped the flames." (Setting fire to community-based businesses is a great way to teach a lesson to someone who is exercising a constitutional right.)

"Ford blamed the rioting on gangs taking advantage of a volatile situation. He declared a state of emergency, set an 8 p.m. curfew through the weekend and asked the Highway Patrol for help." (Wait, I thought the gangs were in mediation with the CHL??? Won't the curfew interfere with the healing???)

"It's exactly what they wanted," Ford said of the group that planned the march, which was canceled because of the rioting." (Um, so what they were protesting against was cancelled, yet they still needed to declare martial law to contain the "counter-protests?")

"At least two dozen members of the National Socialist Movement, which calls itself "America's Nazi Party," had gathered at a city park to march under police protection. Organizers said they were demonstrating against black gangs they said were harassing white residents." (Way to go Toledo. Empower the Nazis by proving their point for them.)

At least 65 people were arrested on charges including assault, vandalism, failure to obey police and failure to disperse, Navarre said. He said the white supremacists had left hours earlier." (I am completely powerless to belabor this point further. Navarre is the same person who has advised business owners in anti-crime seminars to "get away from the bullets" when a robbery happens.)

"We frankly could have made a couple hundred arrests easily," Navarre said. "We just didn't have the resources on hand to arrest all of them." (Sounds like a great reason to have a CHL.)

"They were mostly "gang members who had real or imagined grievances and took it as an opportunity to speak in their own way," Ford said. "I was chagrined that there were obvious mothers and children in the crowd with them," he said. Thomas Frisch, 76, said a large group of men destroyed the exterior of a gas station next to his home of 30 years. "A whole big gang started to come in here. Next thing you know, they're jumping on the car. Then they overturned it. Then they started on the building, breaking windows, ripping the bars off," he said. (Yeah, destroy the locally owned businesses. That will teach a lesson to those out-of-town Nazi protestors.)

I could go on a point by point analysis of the article, but frankly it speaks for itself. I would like to congratulate Mayor Ford and Law Director Herring for doing the impossible - validating the Nazi's complaints.