Life in a Police State....

[ELB]

Luckily not all the police there have prioritized the state over individual rights...

"As he reached to hit me again, I drew my pistol," he said. "He saw the pistol, and I shot and missed him totally 'cause I was half-knocked. He took off running."

"Nothing was said about the gun going off," he said. "The police come over to make a report. The guy said to me, 'Well, you're lucky you weren't killed. You should've had a gun with you. If you had killed the guy, then you would have had to say you took the gun off him.'"

Many Chicagoans Carry Handguns Illegally
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[seamusTX]

That's how it was when I lived there. The cops decided on the street whether someone was good to go or not.

I just want to point out that it is a felony to possess an unregistered handgun in Chicago, and registration was cut off in 1982. It is also impossible for a resident of Chicago to buy a handgun legally.

- Jim

[TheArmedFarmer]

"He estimates that 150,000 otherwise law-abiding Chicagoans are packing pistols illegally...They would rather take a chance with a judge or a jury than take a chance with the bad guy and not have one."

That says it all right there.

[Oldgringo]

"He estimates that 150,000 otherwise law-abiding Chicagoans are packing pistols illegally...They would rather take a chance with a judge or a jury than take a chance with the bad guy and not have one."

That says it all right there.

One has to wonder how many non law-abiding Chicagoans are packing pistols illegally?

[HankB]

It is also impossible for a resident of Chicago to buy a handgun legally.

Actually, unless the law has changed radically, that's not quite the case . . . when I lived there, it was perfectly legal for a Chicago resident with an Illinois FOID card to purchase a handgun outside the city limits; no law was broken unless he then brought the handgun into the city. (Lots of people did just that.)

As for packing guns illegally . . . I have reason to believe that quite a few Chicagoans were packing illegally when I lived there . . . and I DON'T mean gangstas and such. The general feeling is that, first, the cops seldom stop and frisk respectable-looking people at random, so there's no reason to believe that a person who looks and acts respectable is suddenly going to become the object of a police search because he has a concealed weapon.

Second, should he or she need the weapon because a mugger/rapist/whatever attacks, well, consider this: if there's no cop around to arrest the mugger, then there's no cop around to arrest the intended victim for shooting the mugger, right? (Considering the rarity of a cop stopping a crime in progress, it's a safe bet to conclude muggers and rapists generally make sure there's no cops around before they make their move.)

My late uncle was a Chicago cop, and he said every year there were quite a number of "unsolved murders" that, based on the evidence, were probably instances of a bad guy getting a nasty surprise from his intended victim.

They didn't try very hard to solve those.

[seamusTX]

. . . when I lived there, it was perfectly legal for a Chicago resident with an Illinois FOID card to purchase a handgun outside the city limits; no law was broken unless he then brought the handgun into the city.

I moved out of Chicago in 1982. It was my understanding when the Chicago ban went into effect that they passed a state law that prohibited Chicagoans from buying handguns at FFLs outside of the city.

Either I was wrong then or they changed the law, because I can't find any such restriction now.

I do remember some Chicago residents keeping firearms at gun clubs outside the city. That's what a person who moved there had to do, if he wanted to keep his handguns.

- Jim