The Post Intelligencer reports this morning that Seattle homicides rose last year. True, there were 29 intentional killings in 2006, compared with 25 last year. (These numbers need as asterisk: the 29 comes from the PI, which ostensibly obtained their data through public records requests. The 25 comes from the Police Department website, which doesn’t have numbers for 2006 yet.) Still, a little reality check is in order: Without the six people killed in Kyle Huff’s Capitol Hill rampage, this year’s homicide total would be 23 —- two bodies fewer than in 2005. The PI’s Hector Castro mentions the massacre, and the fact that violent crime here is only expected to rise 1 percent this year. But these mitigating facts are tacked on with all the gravity of a dismissive flick of the wrist. The message of the article blazes through: Run for cover, crime is coming! It’s true, violent crime — murder in particular — has ticked up slightly in the U.S. Especially in mid-sized cities like Seattle. But this is no cataclysmic surge. Violent crime is still fall lower than it was in the 1970s, or the 1990s. Meanwhile, other problems have grown. Castro also refers, yet again, to a new statistic I find rather troubling, the meteoric rise of gun-related assaults in the city. What Castro doesn’t mention is that the stat includes any aggravated assault in which a gun was used, displayed, threatened, or implied. The police only began collecting the data two years ago.