BELLEVUE, WA – A young Chicago woman was able to defend herself against a would-be armed robber with a legally-carried pistol, thanks to two Second Amendment Foundation court victories that first nullified the city’s handgun ban and then forced the Illinois Legislature to adopt a concealed carry law, SAF noted today.
The incident is still under investigation, but it is certain that the 19-year-old suspect, who was fatally wounded, would have been facing an unarmed victim had not SAF legal actions paved the way for Illinois citizens to legally have handguns in Chicago, and to be able to legally carry them.
“Our legal actions have always been about putting law-abiding citizens on an equal footing against violent criminals,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “We eliminated Chicago’s handgun ban with our 2010 Supreme Court victory in the McDonald case, and then forced Illinois lawmakers to allow citizens to legally carry with our Moore v. Madigan lawsuit.
“A legally-armed 25-year-old woman is alive today because she could fight back,” he observed.
“Not surprisingly,” Gottlieb said, “the gun control crowd invariably loses its voice when a bad guy is shot while committing a crime. Groups such as Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action scream loudly when they push restrictive gun laws to disarm honest citizens, but when an intended victim is able to win in a deadly confrontation, they quickly stick their heads in the sand and pretend nothing happened.
“Their silence,” he stated, “is not only deafening, it is deadly.”
“SAF’s motto for more than a decade has been ‘Winning Firearms Freedom, One Lawsuit at a Time’,” Gottlieb concluded. “That freedom includes the ability to defend one’s self in a life-threatening situation, and there’s no other way to define an attempted armed robbery on a Chicago street. Anyone who thinks a young woman should not be able to defend herself with a legally-carried handgun needs to readjust their moral compass.”