Toledo gun control laws amount to colossal failure

It's getting hard to keep up with the crime headlines in Toledo. While the council and mayor chase smokers, vote to reinstate failed laws aimed at disarming the poor, and write letters to Gov. Taft opposing HB12, the innocent citizens of that city are under seige. The following headlines were all published in the past week in the Toledo Blade:

Police take 20 minutes to respond to 911 call; 4 yr. old girl fatally stabbed

Man held in robbery attempt

Deputies investigating attempt to snatch child

Clerk hurt in robbery of carryout on Dorr St.

Police look for pair of robbery suspects

Information sought about holdup attempt

Robber fires shot into Wendy’s ceiling

N. Toledo man says he was shot by stranger

Man shot several times at barbecue in Toledo

Pizzeria robbed; ties to Wendy’s heists seen

The founder of criminology, 18th-century scholar Cesare Beccaria of Milan, once wrote:

"False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty — so dear to men, so dear to the enlightened legislator — and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the guilty alone ought to suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve to rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventative but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree."

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Toledo Mayor breaks tie to extend ban on handguns

Tell Mayor Ford to support the self-defense rights of Toledoans