Your comments about criminals attacking visitors is spot on.
Several years ago (more than ten?) the Florida state legislature enacted a law changing the car tags on rental cars. Why? It turned out that criminals operating in high tourist volume cities (Miami, Orlando, etc) were looking for rental cars. With the special rental car tag, visible and illuminated at night, it was very easy to sort out the tourist, with high value cameras and large amounts of cash, from the locals and then just attack the tourist.
I read somewhere that Florida then started recognizing out-of-state CCWs, and let that fact be known. Volume car jackings quickly stopped.
Another reason the criminals would go for the rental cars was that the people in them were less likely to return again and again for court appearances. Lots of cases were simply dropped when the prosecutors couldn't get the victim or witnesses to come back to court.