While crime is down in Chicago at the moment, it hasn’t disappeared entirely. There are still bad actors on the streets, but thankfully there are also tens of thousands of concealed carry licensees in the city, and several of them have been forced to protect themselves in recent days.

Fox 32 reports that a pair of armed citizens were able to protect themselves when a man opened fire on them on the city’s south side Sunday afternoon.

The man opened fire at a southbound vehicle about 5:20 p.m. in the 7900 block of South Knox Avenue, Chicago police said. Two men inside the vehicle, 21 and 29, returned shots, striking the older man in the abdomen, side and leg.

He was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in critical condition, police said. Neither of the men in the vehicle was hurt.

According to police, both men who were targeted possess concealed carry licenses, and while the investigation continues, it looks right now to be a case of self-defense.

Thursday evening, another armed citizen was able to put a stop to a crime spree in the city’s Rogers Park neighborhood. CWB Chicago says an armed man engaged in a carjacking and robbed two businesses before he was shot at by a concealed carry holder.

It all started around 9 p.m. when the offender displayed a gun in his waistband as he tried to rob Little Caesars, 7001 North Clark, the reports show. The man left empty-handed and immediately robbed Taqueria Hernandez across the street at 6983 North Clark.

At 9:04 p.m., the offender flashed a gun and carjacked a driver on the 1700 block of North Lunt, the reports said. He got away with the man’s silver 2008 Saturn sedan, which bears a license plate that begins with BK911.

But the gunman made a tactical error around 9:15 p.m. when he walked up to a concealed carry holder on the 7000 block of North Paulina, pulled out a gun, and said, “give me all you got.”

The would-be victim pulled out his own gun and opened fire on the offender, squeezing off at least five rounds at the man, officers reported. No one sought medical attention for gunshot wounds from nearby hospitals, so it appears the robber was not struck.

The concealed carry holder may not have wounded the suspect, but he at least stopped the attack. At the moment, police don’t have a suspect in custody, but that will hopefully soon change.

Just a few years ago, these stories would have been guaranteed to have a very different outcome, because there were no concealed carry holders in Chicago, or the state of Illinois for that matter. Since 2012, when Illinois politicians reluctantly accepted a shall-issue concealed carry law instead of trying to defend their ban on carrying firearms at the Supreme Court, tens of thousands of Chicagoans have embraced their right to carry, including at least three who used their firearms to protect their lives over the past week.