A 17-year-old in Chicago was shot and wounded early Monday morning in the city’s Roseland neighborhood after a concealed carry permit holder allegedly discovered the teen sitting inside his car.
According to media reports, the armed citizen discovered the break-in around 3:45 a.m. when the car’s alarm went off. The 58-year-old grabbed his handgun and went outside to investigate, where he found two strangers inside his vehicle.
When one of them displayed a gun, the armed citizen opened fire and hit the 17-year-old in the right forearm and left knee. The second suspect bailed out of the man’s car and got behind the wheel of a Dodge Caravan (almost certainly stolen as well) and drove off into the night.
Generally speaking, shooting someone who’s stealing property isn’t seen as a lawful act of self-defense. If, however, that thief also presents a reasonable threat to the life and safety of another, though, then that usually would be considered a justifiable use of deadly force.
In March of this year, for example, an 18-year-old in Indianapolis was charged with attempted murder after shooting a 15-year-old who was among a number of suspects breaking into the car belonging to the 18-year-old’s girlfriend.
Coleman’s mother didn’t want to be identified for fear of retaliation. But according to court records, her son told police he thought the teen he shot was reaching for a weapon. Coleman said he feared for his life, but was still arrested for attempted murder.
“He was forced to make a life or death decision. It’s not just a miscarriage of justice, but systemic racism in action,” said Coleman’s mother. “I feel like, according to God’s law and Indiana statute, he had the right to protect himself.”
For their part, Lawrence police claim Coleman was standing near the doorway, about 20 to 25 yards away from his girlfriend’s Kia, when he shot into the dark across the parking lot.
The gunfire shattered the back window of a gold Nissan which was parked next to the Kia.
“Shooting eight shots would not justify trying to protect an unoccupied vehicle in the state of Indiana,” said attorney Mario Massillamany.
In this case out of Chicago, the only person arrested was the one who got shot. Police may have been able to corroborate the armed citizen’s story through surveillance footage or if the 17-year-old had a gun on him when he was taken into custody. Whatever it might be, investigators likely have some evidence backing up the concealed carry holder’s side of the story or else he would have been put in cuffs at the scene.
If the armed citizen’s version of events is true, then once again the restrictive gun laws in place in Illinois have failed to stop a teenage from getting their hands on a pistol, even as they saddle legal gun owners with having to ask permission just to keep a firearm in the home.
Illinois doesn’t make it particularly easy to exercise your right to bear arms either, with a mandated 16 hours of training and a live fire test that requires range time. Chicago, notably, has no publicly accessible ranges within the city limits, so residents like this armed citizen have to travel to the suburbs or beyond to obtain the training necessary to apply for a Second Amendment permission slip. Despite those barriers, tens of thousands of Chicago residents have acquired their carry permit since Illinois became the last state in the country to adopt a concealed carry law in 2013, and this incident is just the latest example of those armed citizens exercising their Second Amendment rights to protect themselves and others.
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