At approximately 6:00 AM on the morning of December 5, 2022, a 51-year-old concealed-carry holder was sitting in his vehicle in Austin, a community area of Chicago, IL, when another vehicle with three teenagers (aged 15 – 18) approached.
Police reported that one of the young men exited his vehicle and demanded the concealed-carry holder’s belongings while pointing a gun at him. A struggle ensued, and at this point, the 51-year-old man began to fire at the assailant. The young men attempted to flee in their vehicle but crashed the vehicle in short order.
All the teen suspects were taken to hospitals for treatment; one with a head injury from the crash, another with a broken leg (also from the crash), and one with a gunshot wound to the shoulder.
The concealed carry holder was unharmed.
A lot more of these defensive gun use cases are happening in the Chicago area, where it is my understanding that it is difficult to legally own a gun and perhaps even more difficult to acquire a license to carry one. After all, the first rule of a gunfight is to have a gun!
There tends not to be a lot of details in these news stories from the Chicago area, so it is unclear if charges are ever filed against the defenders or not. It is unlikely that there are many rules in favor of the law-abiding gun owner, such as Castle Doctrine or Stand-Your-Ground.
Given the high numbers of people that are shot every weekend alone in Chicago, I can only imagine that more and more law-abiding citizens in that area who can own a firearm and get a license to carry it will be doing so.
