These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is significantly updated from the calendar version. This story is from January of 2024, not September.1
The community alert Chicago police put out that evening lists nine early-morning robberies: 3:30, 3:40, 3:55, 4:08, 4:09, 4:13, 4:15, 4:15, and 4:22 AM. Fifty-two minutes, spread across the North Side, and every victim described the same two cars.
In eight of them, the robbers successfully victimized people in Chicago.
The ninth was a 23-year-old man walking in Edgewater in the dark. A white sedan and a dark SUV came up on him, and a man got out of one of them, showed him a gun, and told him to hand over what he had.
The 23-year-old man had a FOID card and a concealed carry license. (Illinois makes you get both, because they want to encourage people to be helpless victims.) He drew it, and the two of them traded shots in the street.
The robber went back to a car with nothing, and both cars took off south.
The 23-year-old man was uninjured, but there was a trail of blood from one of the robbers.
That was the end of the spree. It’s hard for me to say this strongly enough: Nine targets in an hour, and just having a guy who can defend himself made them stop robbing the people of Chicago.
Ten minutes before they ran into him, the crew had boxed in a 68-year-old cab driver — the sedan against his back bumper, the SUV cutting in front — and robbed him at gunpoint. A police camera caught the whole thing.
Before him it was a 29-year-old sitting in his parked car, and before that a 45-year-old sitting in his, who lost a phone, a wallet, and a lunchbox.
And note that the criminals had at least one gun. But Governor Pritzker and Mayor Johnson wants a disarmed populace. I get incredibly angry thinking about it.
A police bulletin CWBChicago (an excellent, reader-supported news outlet) got ahold of had the crew’s SUV turning up on fire on the South Side later that day.
Sources
News
CWBChicago covered the morning twice, day-of and then again with the surveillance video a week later.
Gunfight erupts between robbery crew, concealed carry holder on the North Side: Chicago police (Day-of, updated that evening with the community alert)
Armed robbery crew caught on video minutes before their crime spree was terminated by a concealed carry holder (Follow-up, with the Broadway surveillance video)
Edgewater shooting: Man with CCL gets into shootout with would-be robber, Chicago police say (ABC7 Chicago)
Attempted robbery ends in shootout on Chicago’s North Side; police alert says it was part of spree (CBS Chicago)
Edgewater armed robbery attempt ends with shootout; 2 possibly related attacks in West Ridge overnight (Chicago Sun-Times)
CCL holder exchanges gunfire with attempted robbers on Chicago’s North Side (FOX 32 Chicago)
2A / specialist media
TheBlaze ran the incident twice, once at the time and again in a roundup later that year.
Oops! Gun-toting crook orders concealed carrier to give up his property, Chicago cops say. It’s a giant fail for the bad guy. (Original incident)
In the desk calendar, every incident comes from the year I’m reporting from — the 2026 calendar has 2024 incidents, the 2027 calendar will have 2025 events, etc. — but it can be hard to get incidents from an exact date, so I pull some of the best incidents from other months to fill in the gaps in the months where I need them.