The National Mall is one of the safest places in Washington, a place for tourists to take in the capital’s grandeur and for residents to relax.
Ward 2, the district that includes the National Mall, is among the least violent areas in the capital, according to data from the Metropolitan Police Department. That sense of safety was shattered on Monday when a gunman exchanged fire with Secret Service agents near the Washington Monument, injuring a bystander.
Last year, Ward 2 recorded the second fewest gun-related violent crimes in the city, according to the data, outranked only by the largely residential and predominantly wealthy Ward 3. So far in 2026, all types of crime have dropped in Ward 2 compared to the same period last year.
Gunfire has occasionally erupted on the mall. Last October, a teenager was shot and injured near the National Air and Space Museum.
In 2023, a 27-year-old was fatally shot outside the L’Enfant Plaza Metro Station in the early hours after Christmas Day.
In 2009, an 88-year-old white supremacist opened fire with a rifle at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, killing a security guard.
And in 1881, President James A. Garfield was shot by an assassin at a railroad station where the National Gallery of Art (and a plaque) now stands along the Mall’s northern border. He died nearly 80 days later.
A few years later, in 1884, construction of the Washington Monument was completed. In the early 1900s, railroads were cleared and a plan to transform the area into a landscaped, symmetrical park was adopted. The National Mall, first envisioned by the French planner Pierre Charles L’Enfant in 1791 to embody the idea of democracy, was not considered officially complete until 2003, when Congress protected it from any future construction.
Despite a relative lack of violent crime in the mall, the Washington Monument was the first place National Guard troops were deployed when President Trump ordered a federal takeover of the city last fall.
Those troops can often still be seen hovering around the monuments and posing with tourists.
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