WHAT CAN ONE MAN WITH A PISTOL DO? SAVE A LOT OF LIVES. Kenyan Hero’s Harrowing Tale of Rescues in Mall Massacre. “In one of the most memorable images to emerge from inside the Nairobi mall attacked last weekend by Islamic extremists, a 4-year-old girl is seen running toward a man who is reaching out a hand to pull her to safety. The man was Abdul Haji, a 39-year-old real estate executive who rushed to the mall as the attack got underway. He managed to evacuate scores of people to safety, including that young American girl, Portia Walker, and is being hailed in Kenya as a hero. . . . Haji says he grew up around guns and lately had been carrying his pistol with him. ‘I left where I was and I headed straight to the Westgate,’ Haji told ABC News. ‘Luckily on that particular day I had actually carried my licensed gun with me so I didn’t have to go back home to waste time and pick up a gun, I went straight to the mall.’ . . . Haji dismisses all the talk of him being a hero, saying he was just going to the mall to save his brother. ‘I think anybody in the situation would have probably done the same thing,’ he said. ‘[If] he was armed and thinking the worst about his family he would have probably done the same thing.'”

Too bad more people weren’t armed: Nairobi Mall Victims Were Tortured. “The al-Shabab militants who attacked a mall in Nairobi last weekend didn’t just kill their victims, they tortured them and mutilated their bodies, according to accounts in Kenya’s media rounded up by USA Today. It makes for rough reading. The stories quote doctors and investigators who describe gouged eyes and dismembered bodies hanging from hooks.”

You know, if this kind of thing keeps happening, people are going to start thinking less of Islam.