PA Bill Number: HB335

Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.

Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...

Last Action: Removed from table

Last Action Date: May 1, 2024

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Chicago officials could learn something from weekend shooting :: 11/03/2015

A fatal weekend shooting in Chicago should send a message to the city’s top officials, especially after Fox News reported this morning that charges are unlikely against the man who pulled the trigger because the decedent in this case was an apparent would-be armed robber.

The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting this morning that the dead man had entered a business, pulled a gun and announced a robbery. A Chicago police spokesman said the dead man “had an extensive criminal history, including prior arrests for robbery,” the newspaper said.

The unidentified armed citizen, who had a concealed carry permit and Illinois FOID (Firearm Owner Identification) Card, shot the would-be robber “multiple times,” according to published reports. He died at the store he was apparently trying to rob.

Earlier this year, an Uber driver shot a gunman who had opened fire on a crowd of people at Chicago’s Logan Square. He also had a carry permit and FOID card, and was not charged.

The lesson here – one that seems to constantly escape not only Chicago’s anti-gun administration but gun prohibitionists everywhere – is that guns in the right hands can have a positive benefit to the community. That doesn’t fit the gun control narrative. But it does show that armed citizens can behave responsibly and fight back when necessary.

Gun control as a campaign issue apparently doesn’t work too well for Democrats right now, according to a story in this morning’s The Hill. It says that “liberal fervor for gun control puts Senate candidates in tough spot.” The story quoted an anonymous Democrat strategist who counseled against making gun control a “primary concern.” But why not?

If liberal Democrats are frothing at the mouth for more and stricter gun regulations, why shouldn’t the party make a big deal about it? Hillary Rodham Clinton already has, and she doesn’t seem to believe it’s a wrong move.

However, The Hill story is talking about the Senate, which Democrats desperately want to take over. That’s where federal judges and Supreme Court justices are confirmed, and Democrats could stock the field with activist liberal jurists bent on narrowing if not reversing the Heller and McDonald rulings that affirmed the Second Amendment protects an individual civil right not tied to militia service.

There’s also concern at the state level. Reuters is reporting today that Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety anti-gun lobbying group is dumping $2.2 million into a couple of Virginia State Senate races, supporting Democrats. If they can take control away from Republicans, it might change things dramatically for gun owners in the Old Dominion.

But the right to keep and bear arms does have a public benefit, as witnessed by the Chicago shooting Halloween night. Most of the time, when private citizens use guns to deter criminal acts, a shot isn’t fired, and there is no news coverage. On those occasions when some bad guy stops a bullet, it serves as a reminder that an armed citizen can fight back, and a message to others with criminal intentions that they ought to consider different career paths.

Maybe those are the lives that are ultimately saved, the ones that anti-gunners constantly harp about. “If it saves just one life,” is something of a battle cry for them. Maybe somebody will be positively influenced to try a different lifestyle because that guy in Chicago ran into an armed citizen.