On Monday, the Supreme Court turned away a challenge to the Illinois law prohibiting lawful carry on public transportation, meaning the Chicago Transit Authority will remain “gun-free”, at least in theory, for the foreseeable future.
Yes, I’m still salty about SCOTUS denying cert in Schoenthal v. Raoul, and not just because the Court let stand an absurd Seventh Circuit decision that essentially allows almost every public space where more than a few people might be present to be designated as a “sensitive place” where guns are banned. Violent individuals are routinely ignoring that Illinois law and victimizing disarmed and defenseless riders, and that will also be the status quo going forward.
Just a few days before the Supreme Court rejected Schoenthal, the Cook County Sheriff’s Department ran across yet another violation of that Illinois law, though it wasn’t reported until today.
A Chicago man already on probation for a federal weapons offense is facing new gun charges after allegedly being found with a loaded firearm at a South Side CTA station.
What we know:
According to the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, the incident happened around 5:40 p.m. March 31 at the 95th/Dan Ryan Red Line stop.
Officers conducting a routine check of the platform reported seeing Carl Adams cross between train cars using emergency doors, which they say is both a safety hazard and a violation of CTA rules.
Adams was taken into custody for disorderly conduct, authorities said. During a safety pat down and search of his backpack, officers found a loaded gun.
Adams was already on federal probation for what was described as a “weapons related offense,” and he now could face several years in prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm.
The same day that Adams was busted with a gun, the website CWB Chicago reported on another man who’d been charged with committing a robbery on a CTA train last year. Emil Hobson was placed on an ankle monitor while he awaited trial, but failed to return home for four days after he left the courthouse. That wasn’t enough to take him into custody, nor was the fact that he let the battery on the monitor die a few days after that. When Hobson was finally taken before the judge who ordered the ankle monitor in late January, she once again allowed him to leave on electronic monitoring.
Four days later, Hobson allegedly committed another robbery; this time in a parking garage, not a CTA train. As of March 31st he was being held without bond, but who knows how long that will last.
Cook County’s catch-and-release system for repeat offenders is already putting the public at risk. Combine that soft-on-crime ideology with the inability to lawfully possess a firearm on public transportation and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. SCOTUS could have put a stop to this madness or at least demanded that Illinois respect the right to bear arms on public transit, but instead we’re going to see more cases like Adams’ and Hobson’s going forward.
Some of these offenders will be nabbed before they have the opportunity to carry out a robbery or assault on a bus or train rider, but that won’t always be the case… and anyone who dares to carry a gun on a bus or train in Chicago so they can protect themselves from harm could find themselves sentenced to prison even as violent predators get away with a slap on the wrist and an electronic monitor on their ankle.
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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