Chicago top cop warns that his officers will shoot concealed carriers

GunsNFreedom.com is reporting an astonishing statement made by Chicago police superintendent Garry McCarthy.

McCarthy is angry that Illinois has joined the other 49 states in the union that have authorized some level of concealed carry. In an recorded interview McCarthy issues a not so thinly-veiled threat that under his leadership, Chicago Police will shoot concealed carriers:

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“You put more guns on the street expect more shootings,” McCarthy said. “I don’t care if they’re licensed legal firearms, people who are not highly trained… putting guns in their hands is a recipe for disaster. So I’ll train our officers that there is a concealed carry law, but when somebody turns with a firearm in their hand the officer does not have an obligation to wait to get shot to return fire and we’re going to have tragedies as a result of that. I’m telling you right up front.”

McCarthy doesn’t just seem to think it may happen; he almost seems to look look forward to it with some sort of vindictive wrath. He asserts that only his police are responsible enough to carry handguns, an assertion that flies in the face of the fact that at least one study shows that police officers are five times more likely to shoot the wrong person than concealed carriers.

A key fact that McCarthy glosses over in claiming that police are so much better trained than the average concealed carrier, is that concealed carriers are not training to be police officers.

Concealed carriers do not learn radio procedures and codes, arrest procedures, the various laws and ordinances, or various other aspects of police work that take up most of the time McCarthy uses to assert his officers are somehow superior when it comes to firearms use.

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The sad, simple fact of the matter is that CPD officers rarely train with their firearms. Most fire their weapons only during during the mandatory annual qualification, which lasts just one hour. There are Girl Scout troops with more frequent range time than the Chicago PD.

In most cities, a police superintendent threatening his city’s most law-abiding citizens with bloodshed would result in a groundswell of calls for his ouster or resignation. That outcome is unlikely in Chicago. Citizens are too busy going to funerals of the more than 250 citizens murdered so far this year under McCarthy’s watch in his “gun free” city.

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