A cell phone store employee with a concealed carry permit in Chicago shot and killed an armed attempted burglar Saturday as the city saw double-digit gunshot victims over the holiday weekend.
The robber entered a cell phone store over the weekend and threatened the employee with a gun while demanding he hand over property.
“A man was shot and killed while trying to rob a cell phone store in Chicago on Saturday, police said. The would-be robber entered the cell phone shop on the 3400 hundred block of West Chicago Avenue in Humboldt Park around 7 p.m.,” Fox 32 Chicago reported.
The man on scene, who the Chicago Sun-Times confirmed was an employee, shot the robber suspect in the chest and stomach, police said.
Police also noted that the 29-year-old employee had a valid concealed carry permit, but law enforcement confiscated both the legal carrier’s firearm and the attempted robber’s.
The attempted burglar was one of eight people who were shot and killed over the Christmas weekend in Chicago. At least 30 people total suffered gunshot wounds.
Illinois has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, with concealed carry permit applicants required to be at least 21 years old, must register with the State of Illinois as a gun owner, must have no criminal convictions in the last five years, no DUIs in the last five years, in addition to no pending arrests. Applicants are also required to take 16 hours of supplementary training.
Around 315,000 residents of the Midwest state have legally obtained concealed carry permits. According to the Chicago Tribune, just 74 individuals with concealed carry permits in the state have been involved in a shooting since 2014.
The Tribune noted that the number of applicants for concealed carry permits, as well as firearm owner identification cards, has spiked amid rising crime within the city.
“With the coronavirus pandemic raging and Chicago at times dealing with civil unrest, Illinois residents shopped for more guns and applied for more firearm permits in 2020 than at any other time in history, state police officials said this week,” the Chicago Tribune reported in November. “There had been more than 500,000 serious inquiries about purchasing guns by this month, according to Illinois State Police statistics, representing a 45% increase over 2019.”
The Tribune continued, “The state also had received a record 445,945 applications for firearm owner’s identification cards as of November 2020, a 167% jump from the 166,649 applications in 2017. The Illinois State Police did not release numbers for any other years but said the 2020 applications ‘blew past’ a previous surge in 2013 after concealed carry licenses were first offered.”
