Chuck’s Gun Shop, a south suburban store in the sights of gun control activists for decades, appears to have closed, according to federal records and a sign on a window saying “going fishing forever.”
John Riggio, who managed the store, couldn’t be reached for comment.
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives database of federally licensed gun stores doesn’t list Chuck’s after December. ATF officials couldn’t be reached for comment Friday.
Over the years, gun control advocates have singled out Chuck’s for selling many of the guns that were linked to crimes in Chicago.
The Riverdale store was a defendant in a $433 million lawsuit former Mayor Richard M. Daley brought against suburban gun shops in 1999, claiming they knowingly sold to “straw purchasers,” people who could legally buy the weapons but would then turn them over to criminals.
The city and Cook County filed that unsuccessful lawsuit to recoup their costs from gun violence, force manufacturers to put trigger locks on guns and prevent distributors from marketing to retailers who sell at gun shows.
Chuck’s also was one of the stores targeted by a 2015 lawsuit seeking to force suburbs like Riverdale to boost their regulation of gun dealers.
Those plaintiffs, including the Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina Catholic Church on the South Side, lost that case, too. The court agreed that more regulations would likely reduce gun violence, but the towns that were being sued weren’t responsible for it.
On Friday, Pfleger released a statement calling the apparent closing of Chuck’s “great news for Chicago.”