The city of Chicago has a reputation as one of the most violent cities in our nation. While some of that is overblown, the truth is that it’s not a particularly safe place to be, at least in certain parts of the city.

As a result, it’s no wonder that many people who can become concealed carry license holders, do so. After all, it’s Chicago and armed citizens are about the best hope you have, particularly if you’re the armed citizen in question.

And with violent crimes skyrocketing, one Chicago resident had to use their weapon to protect their life.

A Chicago homeowner shot and killed a a man Wednesday after witnessing an attempted theft from a vehicle.

According to Chicago’s WGN9, the unidentified 44-year-old was sitting on his porch when he heard a loud noise. When he left his porch to investigate, he noticed two men under a nearby vehicle, and the shootout began.

The Chicago news outlet reported the men were trying to steal a catalytic converter from the vehicle.

The two men climbed out from under the car once they noticed the man, drew their guns and began to fire. The 44-year-old man, who is a licensed concealed carry holder, drew his gun and returned fire, hitting one of the men in the neck. That suspect was later pronounced dead after being taken to Illinois Masonic Medical Center.

The other suspect fled and hasn’t been apprehended.

The homeowner is fortunate. A significant percentage of the increase in homicides we’ve seen come from people who interrupted property crimes like this, only to be shot.

Luckily, the homeowner in question was armed and returned fire, killing one of the jackwagons.

Now, taking a human life should never be easy. It’s one of those things that you can never take back, and you have to deal with the ramifications of that act, and often there are ramifications, even if there are no legal consequences, there’s still the fact that humans are generally wired not to kill other people. We beat that into people’s heads and while it clearly doesn’t take in far too many cases, it does in most.

An armed citizen who takes the life of a criminal in self-defense often has psychological trauma resulting from the incident.

That’s unfortunate, in part because they know that it was either to inflict psychological trauma on themselves or allow the bad guy to inflict physical trauma on them.

Plus they’d get psychological trauma then too.

There really isn’t a great solution. Yet armed citizens do what they have to in order to protect their own lives, even in Chicago.

Interestingly, Cam covered a similar story from Saint Louis on Thursday. Additionally, this incident comes just days after another armed citizen in Chicago killed a man trying to rob him.

Maybe this uptick in armed citizens shooting bad guys will have an impact on the violent crime rate. If nothing else, they take some violent criminals off the streets for good. That’s a win in my book.