On the evening of October 31, a career criminal named Reginald Glidersleeve entered a bodega and currency exchange on Chicago’s South Side. He was wearing a mask, produced a pistol, and announced a robbery was in progress.

Police say Reginald Gildersleeve, 55, walked into the Agencia Mexicana at 2701 W. 51st St. around 7 p.m. Saturday. A customer was making a financial transaction with a worker at the store, which also serves as a currency exchange, when Gildersleeve, wearing a mask, announced a robbery and pulled out a gun, according to Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for Chicago police.

Gildersleeve and the customer “got into some kind of confrontation” and the customer pulled a gun and fired, hitting Gildersleeve several times, Guglielmi said.  At least two workers were inside at the time, a 55-year-old woman and a 17-year-old girl, but no one else was hit.

Several law enforcement sources said Gildersleeve had been holding a toy gun, and one source said it was a paintball gun.

There was a time in Chicago, not more than a few years ago, when the guy who shot the robber would have been looking at a long prison sentence. However, since the Supreme Court decided that the Bill of Rights applied to Chicago, citizens have been able to obtain concealed carry permits and carry weapons.

Reginald Gildersleeve, 55, died at the scene of multiple gunshot wounds. The shooter had a concealed gun permit and was legally carrying the weapon when the shooting took place, Officer Janel Sedevic said.

The case is being investigated but police have reviewed security camera video from inside the store and have said they do not anticipate any further action on this case.

Now the dead robber’s family is crying foul.

But now, Gildersleeve’s family is calling for charges to be levied, saying that the habitual criminal didn’t deserve to die. Igbinosa Oronsaye, Gildersleeve’s stepson, told The Chicago Tribune the shooter overreacted in shooting multiple times.

“Some people don’t actually know how to use guns,” Oronsaye said. “They go to firing ranges, but it’s not the same as a bullet going into someone’s body, it’s not the same as a bullet going into flesh. They should be able to wound first, kill next. He didn’t deserve to get shot multiple times.”

Oronsaye also said the shooter needed to be punished for killing a member of the community.

“You just took a brother, you just took a father from a lot of people. Somebody’s got to answer for that,” he said.

The Washington Post, who would always rather editorialize about a dead citizen than see one take action to defend themselves offers an assessment that bordered on bizarre:

Nonetheless, the Chicago shooting is also raising questions, primarily from the family of the robbery suspect, Reginald Gildersleeve.

“Something doesn’t seem right,” said Igbinosa Oronsaye, whose mother married Gildersleeve three years ago. “He didn’t deserve to get shot multiple times.”

The incident is all the more mysterious because it occurred on Halloween and involved a man in a mask with a fake gun. Various law enforcement individuals told the Tribune that the gun was either a toy or a paintball gun.

Oronsaye told ABC7 that Gildersleeve was a former employee of the store and knew the owner well.

Was the shooting a Halloween prank gone horribly wrong?

Gildersleeve’s stepson is right, some people don’t know how to use guns. In Chicago, though, you have to go through a handgun safety course and demonstrate competence on a range. In this particular case, the shooter did know how to shoot and he can prove it.

Second point is that you shoot until the threat goes away. Gildersleeve “deserved” to get shot as many times as it took to make the people in that store, specifically the one with the weapon, feel like the threat had passed. I’m not sure why being killed with one round is different from being killed with a half-dozen or more rounds but that may just be me. Shooting to wound is something that happens in Hollywood. As the marksmanship record of the New York Police Department shows, when you are shooting at an actual human and under duress you miss a lot

A gun-toting Brooklyn bandit dodged more than 80 police bullets early Friday in a wild street shootout that began with a botched armed robbery and ended with his arrest, officials said.

Oft-apprehended Jerrol Harris, 27, was busted around 1:10 a.m. when a single bullet — out of 84 fired at him — pierced his calf to end a blocks-long police pursuit through Bushwick, cops said.

In addition to the difficulty in hitting the target, there are very few places you can shoot a human being deliberately and be sure of just wounding. Anywhere in the head, neck and torso would be off limits. Both arms and legs have arteries and veins that, if ruptured, more likely than not will result in death.

The Post article is even more specious. There is nothing suspicious about a career criminal (this would be good evidence of inability to plan ahead or foresee consequences) robbing a place where he used to work. Criminals commit crimes. That is what they do. Career criminals, or at least the ones we know about, aren’t very good at committing crimes and get caught a lot. In this case, the prohibition on felons owning weapons actually worked and Gildersleeve decided to use a paintball gun.

Even if it wasn’t a “real” robbery but “a Halloween prank gone horribly wrong” that is really too bad. A grown man should know better. And how were the people in the store supposed to tell the difference. In fact, the Washington Post’s own Eugene Volokh explained that this morning:

But when it comes to people who are using what appear to be deadly weapons to commit crimes, the law broadly authorizes defenders to use deadly force against the criminals. And that doesn’t just let innocent victims protect their lives — it also protects victims against the injury of forcible compulsion. When someone tries to illegally force you to give him money, or to do or not do anything else, by threatening murder if you don’t obey, that is a form of slavery, temporary as it may be. Free men and women are not required to meekly go along, but retain the right to use whatever means they have to stop it.

So, from the law’s perspective, somebody did answer for what happened to Gildersleeve — that someone was Gildersleeve himself.