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Fact check: Contrary to viral claims, handguns are legal in Chicago

Bayliss Wagner   | Paste BN

The claim: Handguns are illegal in Chicago 

The Uvalde massacre has reinvigorated the debate over gun laws and led to unsupported arguments about the effectiveness of gun safety measures.

Radio host Sebastian Gorka, who served as the deputy assistant to former President Donald Trump, has argued that gun violence is rampant in Chicago, even though, he says, handguns are banned there. 

Gorka attacked Chicago's laws after a spate of shootings over Memorial Day weekend in a May 30 Facebook post. 

"40 people shot," the post, reads. "FORTY. In a city where handguns are illegal. It’s not about guns. Or the law-abiding." 

Versions of Gorka's post on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accrued thousands of likes and shares.

Gorka has also previously claimed that all guns – not just handguns – are illegal in Chicago.

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But he's wrong in either case.

"The statements that all guns are illegal in Chicago and that handguns are illegal in Chicago are equally false," Darrell Miller, a professor of law at Duke University, said in a phone interview with Paste BN.

Gorka did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

Handguns are legal in Chicago

While Chicago has tighter gun laws than many other parts of the country, it does not restrict the sale or possession of handguns.

Chicago did have gun restrictions in place in years past, but they have been struck down by court rulings, most recently in 2014.

Chicago banned the possession of handguns within city limits in 1982, but in 2010, the Supreme Court found the city's restrictions unconstitutional. The ruling in that case – McDonald v. Chicago – was similar to the court's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which overturned a ban on gun ownership in Washington, D.C., two years earlier.

"Under McDonald v. Chicago, as in District v. Heller, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution guarantees an individual the right to have a handgun in the home for purposes of self-defense," Miller told Paste BN.

Chicago subsequently banned the sale of handguns, but a 2014 decision from a federal court rendered that, too, unconstitutional. Laws further loosened when Illinois became the last state in the country to legalize concealed carry in 2014.

Experts told Paste BN that Chicago's former gun bans may be why conservatives incorrectly point to it as having radical gun laws today. Nevertheless, Chicago and Illinois still have some stringent policies.

The city currently prohibits the sale, possession and use of assault weapons, such as AR-style rifles, according to its municipal code.

Illinois requires the use of firearm owner identification cards and prohibits "ghost guns" – weapons that are missing identification numbers.

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Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that handguns are illegal in Chicago. While Chicago once had policies effectively prohibiting the possession of handguns in the city, the Supreme Court struck them down in 2010. Currently, the city has a ban on assault weapons, but not on handguns. It has never banned guns altogether.

Our fact-check sources:

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