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I love to side on the side of self-defense, but what this woman is proposing is not a reasonable argument for concealed carry.

The rapist victimizing a community is an argument for concealed carry. The home invader is a situation for concealed carry. The mugger/slasher in the dark parking lot is a situation for concealed carry... our sniper is not.

The victims don't even know they are in the sights until they are down. I can't defend myself against something I can't see.

And the witnesses? - Well, unless the witness is real close to the sniper (and the sniper has not been that careless so far) when he aims and fires, a witness is not likely to be able to take out the now-fleeing sniper in a vehicle from a long ways away with a handgun. And if they try, who knows what is downrange.

I can sell home defense to the populace easily, and concealed carry for situations where I find myself relatively alone with an attacker away from home... but not situations where I am trying to use a handgun to be a hero in a busy populated street against an escaping sniper.

It is the wrong tool for that job. Carry anyway, we could get lucky, but so far this sniper has not been the kind of target a handgun in the purse would have stopped, and I think this idea is too open to criticism by the Brady Bunch.

Quite so. There are plenty of reasons why the good citizens of the greater DC area should be able to carry weapons of their choosing, but sniper hunting is not among them. Sure, it wouldn't hurt, and maybe somebody would get lucky. They don't have that opportunity though.

There is a fair point in there that the people of DC are by and large wandering around completely defenseless from all forms of crime-- snipers included. It is true that a handgun is small comfort when the criminal is hidden and at long range. I would think though that there are any number of circumstances where it just plain wouldn't hurt for more regular citizens to have the option available to them.