God Bless Gun Control

Some sources said the entire length of the Mall was being covered by only six police officers Tuesday night, when a pair of masked robbers preyed on six tourists, holding them at gunpoint, taking their cash and roughly groping one of them.

Sgt. Scott Fear, a Park Police spokesman, said roving officers were on patrol that night in cars, on scooters and on bikes, in addition to the ones standing guard at the monuments. That was one of the changes made after an earlier series of Mall robberies in May, when six people were held up in three attacks. Those robberies grew increasingly violent against women, ending in the rape of a teenage girl near the Smithsonian Metro stop.

Now tell me, Ms. Norton, why shouldn't I have the right to kill these animals when they attack me and my family?

UPDATE: After dinner, I had to drive back into DC to pick something up at my office. Decided to drive around the mall to check things out . . . tourist wise. There was an accident at Constitution Ave and 17th Street (the intersection by the WWII Memorial and DAR Hall) and all the cops seemed to be there. Not many elsewhere on the mall and i saw lots of unsuspecting tourists walking around in fairly dark places looking awfully oblivious to the dangers that lurked nearby. Most of those, I suspect, aren't reading the local papers or watching the local news.