Blade: Toledo's violent crime rate on the rise

City officials and the Toledo media are busy touting the fact that a computer glitch falsely indicated Toledo's overall crime rate in 2002 rose by 2%, when in fact it dropped by 1%. The nature of the malfunction caused by some double-counting.

But they're certainly not headlining the real story: despite a ban on inexpensive handguns in the city, and despite city-funded gun "buyback" programs (both of which were intended to reduce violent crime), violent crimes - homicide, rape, robbery, and serious assault - rose 4.3 percent last year.

Click on the "Read More..." link below for more.

The overall 1% reduction was due to a decrease in property crimes - burglary, theft, vehicle theft, and arson - dropped 1.7 percent from 24,429 in 2001 to 24,021 last year.

Dr. John Lott's research offers an excellent perspective on the situation in Toledo:

When citizens are known by criminals to be unarmed, criminals are more likely to attack people instead of property. On the other hand, Lott's research has found that when law-abiding citizens are given the right to carry a concealed firearm for self-defense, violent crimes against people are diminished, and in some cases found that there is a slight rise in property crime.

The unintended result of Toledo's anti-gun and anti-self-defense schemes as been to encourage criminals to attack the city's defenseless people. The much-intended result of Ohio HB12 would be to refocus criminal's attention away from the innocent.

Click here to read the entire article in the Toledo Blade.