This thread is kinda silly for sure. We have people that don’t live in Illinois telling op to carry machine guns and plates and shit to be safe in the hood because the whole state is the hood. And then we have people that actually know the area stating it is safe. I would tend to trust people from there obviously over out of staters. Op does not have a legal ability to ccw there. Concealed means concealed. I get it. But of all the places in the country that is not the place you want to get caught doing so. You will not be shown any kindness by law enforcement there. You will get hammered by the prosecutor, so you better make sure you conceal better than ever before. The politics of that whole city sucks. It makes the state a giant chess pool to me. I was always nervous as fuck carrying concealed there. And I was a southern Illinois police officer at the time. If you were at the mall that had the shooting and shot and killed a active shooter you will not be getting a parade. You will be bent over by garbage prosecutors like you can not even imagine. Do what you want to do though.