Chicago Sun-Times Concealed Carry Cicero Good Samaritan Police Officer Shot
courtesy Chicago Sun-Times

“Had the good Samaritan not joined the gun battle, the Cicero cop might not be alive today, and the accused shooter might have gotten away.

“We remain unconvinced, all the same, that concealed carry is good for Chicago or Illinois. There is no convincing evidence — just the occasional anecdote — that permitting people to walk around with concealed guns detours (sic)crime. There is credible evidence, on the contrary, that concealed carry leads in the long run to more crime.” – One brave rescue of a Cicero cop doesn’t justify concealed guns – Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board

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83 COMMENTS

    • And his family, and other cops. These gun control nazis are completely out of touch with the real world. Some of them are so brainwashed, I think they would still come to the same conclusion even if a loved one had been saved by a law abiding citizen and his gun, that’s how crazy some of these folks are.

      • Yep… I personally know, and have had conversations with, people who would rather die and have their family members killed than pick up a gun to defend themselves. What’s odd is that these are other wise smart people who don’t back down from fights. Yet they are willing to die (and let their kids die) than touch a gun. The thought of even picking up a gun gives them headaches, and the fact that I always carry a gun is horrifying to them. These are the kinds of people who make up the koolaid drinking suicidal base of MDA and GC inc. I’ve yet to understand their motivition beyond: guns are scary and loud…. It all strikes me as very sheepish.

        • I had this conversation once with a female I worked with everyday. She was brilliant, and a hard worker. Good looking to boot. We talked about a lot of stuff, and somehow this topic came up. She stated she didn’t think she could defend herself, even if her life were in danger. She hated the thought of having a gun, much less using one. She was working with me in GA, but was from NY and had spent most of her life there. Yes, I know there are a lot of 2A supporters in NY, but not nearly enough to overcome the liberal pit of progressive snakes that form the majority of the citizenry of the Empire State. Dependency there has nearly fully supplanted the concept of liberty. Back to my friend, I left her to her thoughts, and never questioned her about this again. I just prayed she would always be safe. These types of folks I dare say greatly outnumber those of us that want the 2nd defended 100% of the time.

    • The left is all about gun control if “it saves just a single life” and yet has the audacity to say “well if guns already saved one life they won’t save more in fact they’ll take more.” Morons.

  2. What’s the difference between the average “Newspaper Editorial Board” and a big bucket of warm stinking dookee ?
    Answer : The Bucket.

    • … permitting people to walk around with concealed guns *detours* crime…

      Detours? Or *deters* crime?

      And, yes, this was directly from the Sun Times site, and not a copy/paste error on the TTAG side.

      “Editorial Board” indeed. It must be a result of the missing bucket.

        • Rare indeed is the journalism major who knows the difference between the words “your” and “you’re” these days. It used to be a requirement to graduate from the fifth grade, but the days of literacy are gone now. Replaced by the Age of Ignorance.

      • The “journalism” field needs licensing, competency tests and ethical standards.

        Doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, architects, nurses, barbers, beauticians, plumbers, electricians, A/C techs, et al are required to be tested and licensed, why not journalists. It might return the field to legitimacy from it present fraudulent status. Articles written by unlicensed folks should have cigarette label-like warnings about the quality of the content and be restricted to the Opinion Page.

        • The mainstream media has always been dishonest. From the “yellow journalism” of the late 1800s and early 1900s to today’s “fake news”, journalism has shown its true (communist) roots.
          From the lies about the Spanish-American war to the New York Times’ walter duranty hiding the truth about and denying the artificially engineered and forced communist “famine” in the Ukraine, to the lies about the 1968 Viet Nam communist Tet offensive (a military victory for the South Vietnamese and American troops) reported by walter cronkite as a military defeat, cronkite and his ilk were successful in prolonging the Viet Nam war for years, giving “aid and comfort” to the enemy, who bragged about being supported by the U S media.
          Look at NBCs doctoring of GMC truck gas tanks, rigging them to explode, and the deliberate mischaracterization of George Zimmerman’s conversation withe the 911 dispatcher, deleting a key phrase, as well as showing Trayvon Martin as a 12-year-old cherub rather than his more recent “thug” facebook picture.
          The media has become a “fifth column” of the government and is not to be trusted. The CIA has had its hooks in the media since the 1950s. In fact, Hollywood script writers were paid to insert anti-drug messages in their scripts during the “drug hysteria” period of the 1980s through 2000s. Today, we have “crisis actors” embedded in our government and media, the same “crisis actors” who keep showing up, being used in every (fake) “crisis”. The mainstream media keeps parroting these impostors, thinking that we are stupid, not being able to see through their lies and deceptions.
          To our advantage, we now have the internet, which gives the ordinary citizen the ability to see through the deceptions and lies, and the capability to be real “journalists”, quite often getting and reporting the story TRUTHFULLY before the mainstream media.
          In fact, there are calls by “mainstream media” to “license” journalists, in an attempt to keep these “citizen journalists” out…twenty years ago, any journalist suggesting such a scheme would have been thrown out, but nowadays…

        • First, because licensure requirements for 1A protected rights is as unethical and tyrannical as licensure requirements for 2A rights.

          Second, because looking at the state of the “profession” would you really trust them to A. write a fair and ethical standard of conduct or B. to enforce it fairly and ethically?

          Anti-statist pro-liberty media is already facing an uphill battle. How much worse would it get when the professional licensure body starts wielding the licensing rules as a hammer against people who do not toe the line?

          Which sounds remarkably like the concern over the state using registration and licensing rules to deny access or confiscate firearms from undesirables… like you and me.

      • They meant detours, not deters. The word is intentional. They are trying to imply that concealed carry could only detour crime, sending it somewhere else, not deter it outright.

      • It detours crime. When a criminal knows a potential victim is armed, he goes the other way and finds someone more defenseless.

  7. But, But They always say “If it only saves one life”. The disarmament crowd loves to spout that, but I guess the one officer doesn’t count.
    What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

  8. “There is credible evidence, on the contrary, that concealed carry leads in the long run to more crime.”

    True … if criminals are the ones carrying concealed.

    From the article: “Hang your argument on a single anecdote, and you can defend almost anything.”

    Also true. So the article uses four of them, reports of concealed carriers behaving badly over the past year, plus a study from Johns Hopkins that, if I recall correctly, was funded by Bloomberg.

    Four. That’s not even a single weekend in Chicago’s worth of bad guys shooting. I won’t go into the potential impartiality of the Hopkins research, it’s been done elsewhere.

    • Two of the four examples are demonstrations of positive use.

      So they show 2 for and 2 against to demonstrate the fickleness of anecdotal evidence.

      Then they present SCIENCE to show that they are a fact driven empirically based body who did not come to a conclusion and then go looking for things to support said opinion.

      At the very end they briefly mention how incomplete the data set is… you know for balance.

    • Yes, the “study” came from the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Citing reports from the Bloomberg school during a discussion of self-defense rights is like citing a report from Bob Jones University during a gay rights discussion. Both sources should, rightly, be assumed to be biased.

  9. “There is no convincing evidence — just the occasional anecdote…”

    Violent crime involving guns is the anecdote; it is the anomaly.

    And if we’re playing by your rules, and occasional anecdotes aren’t relevant, then we can all stand down on the AWB’s. Shall we?

    • Look at the “gun crime” stats for states with the least restrictive gun laws vs. the most restrictive. On a per capita basis, I’m 99% confident that states like Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, and the Dakotas have the least amount of “gun crimes”. Like a t-shirt I saw reads, “Welcome to Idaho, assume everyone is armed.” Criminals don’t seek armed confrontation, so they stay where the easy prey exist.

  10. “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
    — Joseph Goebbels
    “Nuff said.

    • I believe this to be correct——“A lie gets half way around the world before the truth gets its pants on.” Churchill

        • Churchill was a master of precise language and timed pauses, although the latter was also used to control his stuttering.

          Also he and his personal bodyguard were fans of the 1911 pistol and both were very proficient because they would frequently practice.

      • Ironic, but apparently Bloomberg has read Goebbels Play Book. Sick, that instead of feeling irreparably soiled, Bloomberg adopted Goebbels tactics. Guess that testified to Bloomie’s complete lack of moral character.

  11. Bullcrap. Tell that to officer and his family. That otherwise would be attending a full dress funeral. Show us the increase in crime with real numbers. They cant.

  12. “There is credible evidence, on the contrary, that concealed carry leads in the long run to more crime.” – In this case, “credible” is determined by how closely it validates their existing prejudice against guns.

    • I have not heard a single state claim any increase in crime occurred after passing carry legislation. Not one. So is this reporter/editor/whatever just that amazingly stupid, or is he/she/it a liar.

    • The studies that have been done do reflect that licensed concealed carriers do commit crimes, only about half of which involve firearms. However, that same evidence demonstrated that concealed carriers commit crimes four times less often than police officers.. and that the percentage of crimes attributable to concealed carriers is almost a rounding error. Last but not least, t heir comment conveniently ignores the Obama era CDC report of DGUs, as well as the Lo9tt and (now his name escapes me–the Florida criminologist) showing 1.5 to 2.5 million DGUs per year, most of which did not require the firing of the weapon.

      Their claim that CCWs increase crimes is, at best, anecdotal. It harks back to the oft-stated conceit of big city police chiefs that more guns invariably leads to more gun crimes.

  14. They go on to cite a Bloomberg-sponsored study. Yes, I’m sure we can trust people in service to the most rabid anti-gun activist in the country.

  15. LEGAL concealed carry is a result of citizens realizing that they are responsible for their own safety. Chicago gun crimes would be vastly reduced with stricter penalties and a no-plea policy for those who use guns to commit crimes. Chicago gun crime goes largely unpunished. In fact, the political elites seem hell bent on punishing the citizenry while avoiding any punishments for violent criminals.

    • I recall reading that 12% of Chicago murders are ever prosecuted. Lord knows how many result in actual convictions. Maybe there is difficulty locating the guns, in order to prosecute them.

    • considering the number of democrat officials that end up accused of various different crimes I would be inclined to say it was a case of protecting their own kind

  16. There is no convincing evidence … that permitting people to walk around with concealed guns [deters] crime.

    What the speaker really means is that he/she has no convincing FEELINGS that responsible concealed carriers deter crime.

    And even if there were incredibly compelling evidence, it would not matter to such people who supplant reality with feelings.

    I had a recent exchange with an aunt that illustrates the point. My aunt said that any amount of carbon dioxide, no matter how minuscule, which we release into the atmosphere will affect the climate. I asked her how she knew that. Her response, “well of course it has to.” I responded that various systems are utterly and totally insensitive to their inputs, at least to a point. She said that was not true. Never mind the fact that I have designed and implemented such systems. Reality did not matter to this aunt. Only her feelings mattered.

    • Did you advise her to stop aspirating as every time she does so she releases a tiny amount of CO2? Global warming, it’s all your aunt’s fault! 😉

      • I actually did bring that to her attention, stating that every human “pollutes” the atmosphere when we breath. Of course that brought up the interesting followup question: how far do we go to eliminate carbon dioxide “pollution”. I will not even bother to state her response which was quite amusing.

        • It is notable that many radical environmentalists are also members, or at least agree in the principles, of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. But for most us proles it won’t be voluntary.

  17. I’ve been in the exact spot that cop was shot at…you’re a fool if you DON’T carry a gun. And I thought the Sunslimes went outa’ print to digiltal rag. BTW CC was court ordered in ILLinois-kicking and screaming.

    • Not quite accurate. The court of appeal was intent on issuing an order that would have implemented unlimited shall issue ccw, or even unlicensed ccw, but it gave the State an opportunity to pass a licensing law before the court issued its mandate. Which the state did. At the last minute of course.

  18. So they give three examples of concealed carry saving lives, and two examples of concealed carriers charged with being reckless (though I don’t know if they were actually convicted)… Hey hardest working paper, there is something you can do: if concealed carry license holders commit crimes, then what is the number of yearly FOID and concealed carry licenses revoked due to criminal convictions? What is the number of arrests and convictions in the concealed carry license population vs general population? If you are going to single one population group out, why not a couple more demographics, convictions by location, age, political party, whatever… Are concealed carriers charged and convicted of more crimes than the general public, or people groups living in a certain part of town?

    As for the “rigorous” study of crime after a certain law is enacted, are the criminals charged and convicted in the rising crime concealed carriers? If not, what is the correlation? If taxes were raised and then a jump in crime happened over ten years, do taxes cause crime? Maybe, but can you prove it? What about if violent crime is down and incandescent light bulbs were banned in the same period? Old light bulb technology caused violent crime, got it!

  20. How about the fact that in places where it’s easier to carry (no hoops to jump through to get a license, etc.), the crime rates are lower than in Chitcago? Perhaps the crime rate is so high there, because the crooks know that the average person there is unarmed? We can “suppose” all day long, but how about erring on the side of liberty for a change?

  21. They don’t want this to happen again. Must ban guns before there is more evidence revealing their lies. Same reason why they don’t want school staff to protect the children with firearms. Hell no to open carry because that will desensitize Americans to seeing guns on people that don’t wear badges.

  22. Even if concealed carry did make people less safe, in general, I would still choose it.

    Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem.

    • I am with you, although I can’t imagine how that would be possible. I suspect, if we knew the truth, there are a lot of people on the other side of the argument who would still want all firearms outlawed, even if they knew for a fact that doing so would *double* violent crime, murders, rapes, and armed robberies.

  23. I can not get it across to these anti CC people, Outlaws Don’t Care About Laws. Anyone , and I ‘ll bet my retirement on it, anyone who has a Concealed Carry permi/ license is not an. outlaw. Believe you me, I used to be an outlaw and we were not concerned with Laws, other then the repercussions of getting caught. Laws were for the law abiding.

  24. “Licensed Concealed Carry Leads to More Crime in Chicago”

    Or Not.

    “No Such Thing As A Good Guy With A Gun”

    “A man with a concealed-carry license was commended for coming to the aid of Cicero police who were engaged in a shootout with a man who shot and wounded an officer near the Stevenson Expressway Thursday, authorities said.”

    It’s refreshing for the headlines on two different stories to prove the delusional Marxist Left wrong,themselves.

  25. I recently started dating someone from Chicago. She’s eager to get out of that shithole and move to a free state and get a gun.

  27. “Credible evidence,” as opposed to the reality that violent crime has declined by more than 40% alongside the liberalization of concealed carry.

    If you’re in the mood for reading fantasy-fiction, just check the the editorial pages of an urban newspaper near you.

  29. Something tells me that the ‘evidence’ they need to be convinced of gun carry efficacy is infinite while the evidence needed to be convinced of ‘gun control’ is “whatever ya got”

  30. Hope this hasn’t already been raised – but wasn’t there an FBI study publicized fairly recently where they said concealed carry DOES deter (or detour, take your pick) crime. Plus there is the CDC study that confirmed Kelck’s work…

  31. “Forget it Jake, it’s Apartheid Chicago.”

    I would never intervene in a gunfight involving the Chicago PD (or any nearby department), since it’s impossible to know going in who the real criminals are.

    That having been said, nobody should be surprised that Chicago media are on the side of known criminals. They’re just falling in line with Chicago city “government” and the police, which are in bed with the gangs.

  32. Ignorance is curable. Willful and malicious ignorance in the face of facts is just plain stupidity. In this case, add petulance because their ‘if it saves one life’ is being shoved right back in their faces.

  33. The Chicago establishment again trying to push the anti-2A message through the news papers, which help control the city of Chicago and the rest of Illinois with misinformation. I hope that open carry will prevail in Hawaii’s federal appeals court case and stick it to Illinois and other anti-2A states. This would turn them upside down into a turmoil. Just waiting to see if Kavanaugh will really get a seat on the Supreme Court after this blind sided attack on him. Illinois citizens deserve better than the anti-2A establishment has been dishing out with their gun control agenda this year in the Illinois state legislature and the so called free unbiased press in Chicago.

  34. Why would ANYTHING the Sun Times report be mistaken for the truth?? It’s located in one of the biggest, liberal, most violent hellholes in the country, and has been this way for many decades!! The city has been run by liars, thieves, and corruption for so long it would take a true revolution to clean out that swamp of vipers. The inmates run THAT asylum, and the media there has been a puppet of the Democratic Party for decades. I have never mistaken the media for anything resembling free, unbiased, TRUTHFUL reporting. More gun control has never been the answer in Chicago and never will be the answer. There is NO LAW that could be passed to stop what city officials have allowed for so long…the proliferation of the gangs and thugs!! Criminals don’t give a DAMN about any laws, much less those involving gun ownership. My right to own firearms is way more important to me than some sniveling crybaby screaming about gun control!!

  35. Chicago is lost. The people there have exactly what they want. Otherwise they wouldn’t have the government they have. The editorial board is just a reflection of that.

  37. The Chicago Sun Times is like the National Enquirer of serious news. Anybody that takes anything the Sun editorializes seriously will get their nightly news at MSNBC or CNN or any other of the alphabet news services. “All opinion, all the time”. Simply, the reason there are more shootings in Chicago if in fact there is a shread of truth to the article is because the former victims are now practising more with their new guns and actually hitting what they’re aiming at, unlike the gangbanger who shoots with the gun held sideways because it looks cooler that way. Eventually it will level off and the number of shootings will gradually decrease, because all the gangbangers will be dead. Problem solved….

  38. The Editorial Board needs to learn how to use spell check. And this from a major market newspaper? Who have the got, Jimmy Olsen “cub reporter,” minding the store? With editorial logic and lack of concern for detail, it is no wonder that print media is dying.

  39. I’m a White male 55 yrs. old & grew up in Cokeland, Ca(Oakland) & you know All the 70-90 IQ Bongo Beaters are Armed so they can Cap their Bros so if Dey don be carin fo demselfs o dey bruthuz why u beez thankin dey karez bout choo? All these Retards understand is Whoop their Azz or Kill them. Less Welfare Scum to Clean up after. Of course I now live in Florida when if confronted by a darkie with bad intentions Cap their Azz.

  40. The Left will LIE, CHEAT AND STEAL to advance their agenda, always have and always will, yet the Right refuses to admit this.

    • they will do far worse than that too. They are also quite happy to commit mass murder and genocide if it will advance their cause too.

  41. Chicago means smell of wild garlic (sometimes referred to as “bad smell”) from the very beginning, and it still stinks politically. During prohibition crime ran rampant and the gangs were making so much money they could afford to buy judges and cops. The cops they couldn’t buy tried to clean up the city but were blocked by the crooked politicians. Nothing has changed in all that time. Not even Ol’ Mother Leary’s cow couldn’t burn out the corruption.

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