“Joe Jackson forced a security guard at gunpoint to take him up to the 38th floor offices of Wood, Phillips, Katz, Clark & Mortimer, which specialized in intellectual property and patents. He carried the revolver, a knife and hammer in a large manila envelope and chained the office doors behind him, police said…

… “He had already shot four people. He had reloaded his gun,” Cline said Saturday. There were 25 to 30 other people on the floor at the time

…Jackson, 59, told witnesses before he was shot that he had been cheated over a toilet he had invented for use in trucks, Police Superintendent Phil Cline said Saturday…

…He was holding a hostage at gunpoint Friday when SWAT officers shot him from about 45 yards away…” – Associated Press

Three innocent people died and a fourth was wounded. The serfs of the Kingdom of Chicago have to endure this kind of abuse because they are prohibited by law from even owning handguns, and carry concealed? Fuggitaboutit. An interesting detail of this situation is that the city council members have a loophole written into the law for them – they can carry guns or request armed bodyguards at the city’s expense if they choose to. To me, this is the Nth degree of hypocrisy. And of course, hizzoner, the Mayor Daly Jr., can avail himself of all the armed bodyguards he wants. But poor old common Working Joe? Fuggitaboutit. I think the Mayor and the city council of Chicago should be held criminally liable for these deaths.

The Illinois State Rifle Association plans to introduce shall issue concealed carry legislation in the next session. I wish them all the luck in the world, but I’m not overly optimistic. Says ISRA:
 

“This tragedy underscores the fact that we live in a violent world - a violent world where individuals bent on committing murder and mayhem will take great lengths to evade the law and thwart even the most sophisticated security systems in order to commit their barbaric deeds.

As home to some of the nation’s leading financial service companies, the Citigroup Center employs state of the art security hardware and comprehensive security procedures to protect its tenants. Nonetheless, Friday’s gunman was able to muscle his way through a security checkpoint, travel to the 38th floor of the building, chain the doors to the law office shut, and methodically execute 3 people — all for the sake of a disagreement over, of all things, a toilet seat.

With their only means of escape chained and padlocked shut by the gunman, the 30 or so workers in the law office became the proverbial “fish in a barrel.” Had the police not intervened so swiftly, the gunman could have continued on his rampage, unimpeded, until he either ran out of ammunition, or until he ran out of victims to kill.

One has to wonder how the outcome may have differed had any of the law office staff been trained and licensed to carry a defensive firearm. Unfortunately, the answer to that question will remain unknown as Illinois is one of only 2 states in the nation that prohibit law abiding citizens from carrying firearms as a means of self defense. Indeed, the outcome would be hard to predict, but at least the people in that office would have been given a fighting chance to survive.”

I don’t think I can say it any better than that.