Criminal victimization at lowest level in 30 years

The 2003 National Crime Victimization Survey, which is released by the Dept. of Justice, reveals long-term declines in victimization are at the lowest per capita rates in nearly 30 years.

Highlights:

* Overall violent victimization and property crime rates in 2002 are the lowest recorded since the inception of the NCVS in 1973.***Footnote 1: Based on adjustments to pre-1992 estimates to account for the 1992 redesign of the NCVS.***

* In 2002 the rate for rape was 0.4 per 1,000 persons age 12 or older, 60% of the 1993 rate.

* For the decade the rate for robbery was down 63%, falling to 2 per 1,000 in 2002.

* From 1993 to 2002 victimization by aggravated assault, associated with serious injury or weapons, declined 64% to 4 per 1,000. The rate of simple assault -- a crime that involves neither serious injury nor weapon -- fell 47%.

* The rate of violent crime dropped 21% from the period 1999-2000 to the period 2001-02.

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In the past 20 years, a "right to carry revolution" has swept much of the nation, leaving a handful of states like Ohio in the age of defenselessness and victimization.

Ohio's gun grabbers claim that "more hidden, loaded guns" on our streets will lead to more violence. But the facts from NCVS prove otherwise. In the same time that violent crime has fallen to record lows, hundreds of thousands more firearms have been put on the nation's streets in right to carry states, in the hands of law-abiding citizens.

The gun grabbers won't like this NCVS data either:

Last year, 93% of violent crimes against innocent citizens were carried out without the criminal use of a firearm. 96% of rapes and 75% of robberies were committed by criminals without firearms. So why is the anti-gunners' answer to violence is to make it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to obtain firearms, or the right to bear them for self-defense?

If their real goal was to prevent violent crime, groups like the Million Mom March-Brady Campaign-Handgun Control Inc. would be fighting for the right to choose armed self-defense instead of spending all their time, money and effort preventing the 4% of rapes in which a firearm was misused.

Click here to read the 2003 National Crime Victimization Survey.