I knew Illinois had a pile of gun control laws on the books, but I haven’t kept up with every single measure. Some, like an assault weapon ban, makes a lot of news and stick in the mind pretty easily.

But there are others.

For example, carrying a replica gun in Illinois can be a crime. We know this because of this guy who got charged with just that recently.

A man from Joliet has been charged with disorderly conduct after an “imitation” firearm fell out of his clothes and accidently fired a blank when it hit the ground at the food court at Fox Valley Mall in Aurora on Saturday, according to police.

…

The man charged, Kyle Strango, 21, is accused of carrying a replica pistol, which was a top-firing blank gun, an Aurora police spokesperson said on Monday.

There were no injuries reported.

Now, I don’t think carrying a replica pistol should be a crime. However, I can’t help but wonder just why Strango was carrying a blank-firing replica in the first place.

I can get why someone might carry a replica gun. They either don’t want to carry a real one or they lawfully can’t, but they’d like to be able to scare away an attacker. It’s not the best strategy, but it probably beats insulting the attacker’s mother as a deterrence strategy.

But why carry one loaded with blanks? Does he think he can shoot a warning shot or something? Blanks don’t sound like real rounds going off, for one thing. For another, warning shots don’t necessarily work, either, and can easily get you shot and killed all on their own.

So yeah, I have questions.

The fact that Strango had the gun on him in a mall before it fell out and discharged only marginally fazes me. I can sort of come up with scenarios why that could be a thing. His being charged for doing so isn’t even the hardest part to accept. This is Illinois, where even fake guns are a bridge too far for folks. Especially with it firing. That’s going to land you in hot water pretty much anywhere outside of a track meet.

I’m still mostly hung up on what kind of “thinking” says you should carry a loaded, blank-firing replica gun into a mall in one of the most anti-gun states in the nation, especially when you’re carrying it in such a way that it’ll just fall out and go off.

There’s no mention of whether Strango justified his actions to law enforcement or not. I’d love to hear his reasoning. I’d love for him to be able to make this make sense, though I doubt he can.

But then again, maybe he can. It is Illinois, after all, and that is a notoriously anti-gun state, so maybe he just didn’t want to futz around with trying to carry an actual firearm lawfully.

Ironically, if he had had a real gun, the odds of it discharging when it was dropped would have been nearly non-existent. Those don’t go off when dropped as a general thing, while blank-firing replicas don’t have that same level of safety. Nice job, Illinois. You’re idiotic gun laws make have resulted in this freak-out.

Not that they care.