The overall crime rate continues its four year decline in Cleveland despite the City's efforts to overturn state gun laws and once again take gun rights away from residents.
While criminal on criminal violence still continues to be a problem (mostly gang and drug related), the average citizen has become increasingly safer in the city over the last four years, which roughly coincides with efforts at the state level to expand concealed carry and gun rights in general. As citizens become increasingly able to protect themselves and thwart the efforts of criminals, those criminals have shifted their focus to property crimes such as burglary and theft.
Meanwhile, Cleveland continues in its lawsuit against the state of Ohio (opposed by the National Rifle Association and Ohioans For Concealed Carry) attempting to circumvent statewide preemption of gun laws so that it may once again impose stringent restrictions upon gun ownership.
With the majority of homicides being the result of disputes between criminals, those gun laws have exactly zero affect. The criminals are already banned from owning firearms and obtain them through theft or black market sales. The only ones disarmed by such laws are the law-abiding citizens, the very ones who are now able to defend themselves and are forcing the criminals to change their activity in an effort to avoid confrontations. While this does result in an increase in property crimes, fewer innocent victims end up getting hurt or killed.
The City is misguided in these attempts, and hopefully the State will prevail in court.
Comments
I disagree with your assessment that the city is misguided. They know exactly what they are doing. They cannot micro-manage the lives of their residents or exercise total control over them if they are armed. Therefore the existence of criminal gangs is tacitly allowed and subtly encouraged in order to give the politicians an excuse to place even more restrictions on the productive residents and thus be able to exert command and control of them.
To say they are misguided is to underestimate them and believe them stupid. They are not stupid. Assigning stupidity to one's enemies is a surefire way to be defeated by them.
This situation in not unique to Cleveland, all those in our nation who aspire to be our masters are using this same playbook. They aren't stupid, but we are if we believe them merely misguided. The more often they can arrange failed outcomes, the more control they can claim to need to "keep us safe".
It is no accident that when a program starts to provide benefits to the average citizen, such as you have listed in your article, that politicians try to repeal it.
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