Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
More Guns, Less Crime: Since Illinois began issuing concealed-carry permits this year, robberies, burglaries, car thefts and, yes, even murder, are down significantly.
Last month, when an 86-year-old Crestwood, Ill., man decided to visit his local phone store, he arrived to find a robbery underway. After staying outside to keep others from entering the store, he saw the suspect fleeing through a back door. He pursued the suspect, legal firearm in hand, stopped him, then held him until police arrived to make the arrest.
The actions of the unidentified law-abiding citizen were made possible by Illinois becoming the 50th and final state to enact a concealed-carry law, legislation that, as it has done nationwide, coincides with a precipitous drop in the Chicago crime rate.
Chicago Police Superintendent Gerry McCarthy, at a recent city council hearing, reported the good news of less crime. He credited better police work, but there's another factor McCarthy left unstated - the increase in the number of pistol-packing permits that let citizens defend themselves, their families and their neighbors. The law has left criminals uncertain of who might be able to shoot back.
"It isn't any coincidence that crime rates started to go down when concealed carry was permitted," Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, said in the Washington Times.
"Just the idea that criminals don't know who is armed and who isn't has a deterrent effect. The police department hasn't changed a single tactic - they haven't announced a shift in policy - and you have these incredible numbers."
As of the end of July, Illinois had received 83,183 applications and had issued 68,549 concealed-carry licenses, with many more expected. According to media reports, the Chicago Police Department says robberies leading to arrests have dropped 20% from last year while reports of burglary and motor vehicle theft have declined 20% and 26%. The homicide rate hit a 56-year low in the first quarter of this year.
On Feb. 22 of last year, a 5-4 majority of the 10-member U.S. 7th Court of Appeals upheld an earlier decision by a three-member panel that addressed the absurdity and inconsistency of Illinois gun laws that allow ownership of a firearm, but not the right to carry it outside the home. In other words, the "right to keep, but not to bear, arms."
Chicago's long-standing attempt to deny its citizens their full Second Amendment rights under the Constitution met another court defeat recently when U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang said the city ban on retail gun shops owned by licensed dealers went too far to count as a "sensible restriction" on gun ownership to prevent gun violence.
"The ban on gun sales and transfers," wrote Chang in a 35-page opinion, "prevents Chicagoans from fulfilling, within the limits of Chicago, the most fundamental prerequisite of legal gun ownership - that of simple acquisition."
Chang found the city's "blanket ban" on sales and transfers of firearms violated the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
The current fight to protect the Second Amendment began with the late Otis McDonald, an Army veteran who lived in a high-crime area of Chicago and who succumbed this year to cancer but not gang violence. He won his case asserting that the Second Amendment he fought to protect gave him the right to bear arms to protect himself and his wife, just as he once protected his country, and that the amendment meant what it said - his right to bear arms shall not be infringed.
Gang and drive-by shootings remain a major problem in Chicago. But the trend in issuing more concealed-carry permits as crime rates drop reflects the effect of an increasingly armed citizenry that feels a firearm in the hand is sometimes better than a cop on the phone.