D.C.'s Crime Problem

When it comes to sacrificing civil liberties in the name of fighting crime, Washington D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and his administration are full of innovative ideas. Among them:

• Giving police officers bigger, badder guns.

• Sending officers door to door requesting to conduct "voluntary" gun and drug searches of citizens' homes.

• Cordoning off portions of the city with almost certainly unconstitutional checkpoints requiring citizens to tell the police where they came from, where they're going, and what their business is in that particular neighborhood. The Washington Post reports that motorists refusing to answer questions or to submit to requested searches of their cars risk arrest.

Ah, but there's one crime-fighting idea Fenty adamantly opposes: letting law-abiding D.C. residents own a gun for self-protection. Seems that only the government can be trusted to protect you from crime. Except, of course, when it doesn't.

It's interesting that crime-fighting ideas requiring the citizenry to give up some of its freedoms are "innovative," while proposals that would give some freedom back are "dangerous."