Later this month the Supreme Court is slated to consider Schoenthal v. Raoul in conference, and if the justices grant cert the challenge to Illinois’ ban on lawful concealed carry on public transportation could be heard this fall.
While the briefs filed by the plaintiffs and the defendants have largely argued over whether or not there’s a historical rationale for keeping public transportation “gun-free”, there’s a pragmatic argument to be made against the weapons ban as well: criminals are routinely ignoring those prohibitions, and violent crime on Chicago Transit Authority property is the highest it’s been in decades.
As the Chicago Sun-Times reports:
The CTA has touted an overall drop in crime, due in part to falling reports of robberies and thefts. But the record number of felony assaults and batteries underscores the work still needed to improve the CTA’s image and appease the feds.
With all due respect to the paper’s reporters, the issue here isn’t the CTA’s “image”, or even the potential loss of tens of millions of federal dollars because of the staggering amount of violence on CTA property. Fundamentally, this is about the safety of those dependent on the CTA to get around, and it’s pretty clear that the “gun-free” status of the CTA isn’t doing anything to keep them safe.
Attacks on the CTA rose last year, even as those crimes fell 15% citywide between 2024 to 2025 – the largest drop in a decade. The police department recorded 469 aggravated assaults and batteries on the CTA last year, above the 441 reported in 2024, city data shows. A new record for those crimes has been set every year since 2021.
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (and the state of Illinois) maintain that there is no right to keep and bear arms in “discrete, confined spaces”. That argument echoes the state of Hawaii in Wolford v. Lopez, which defended its “vampire rule” banning guns by default on all private property by arguing there’s “a well-established tradition ofprohibiting firearms at crowded places.”
In some crowded spaces, maybe. But as the Supreme Court made clear in Bruen, a crowded public place that’s generally protected by law enforcement does not automatically become a “sensitive place” where firearms can be banned. And despite the presence of the Chicago Police Department on CTA property, violent assaults continue to rise. In fact, violent crime on CTA property is up 33% so far this year, so we’re well on our way toward looking at yet another record-breaking number of violent felonies when 2026 statistics are finalized.
On average, there’s more than one violent felony every day on Chicago’s trains and buses (and train stations and bus stops as well). Would those numbers decline significantly if those with a valid carry license could bear arms in self-defense when they use public transit? I have no idea. But I do know that we the people have the right to do so, and at the moment violent criminals see the CTA as a hunting ground full of disarmed and defenseless victims. It’s such an inviting environment for the lawless that a guy wearing an ankle monitor when he was arrested for a robbery on CTA property last year was recently arrested for another robbery on a Red Line train… while once again wearing an ankle monitor.
Chicago’s criminal justice system routinely returns violent criminals to the streets, and far too many of them view the CTA as their playground. The Supreme Court can put an end to this by recognizing that the right to keep and bear arms doesn’t stop once you step on public transportation property.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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