Illinois Attorney General candidate Aaron Goldstein (D) was robbed at gunpoint in broad daylight during a campaign stop in Chicago on Thursday.

Four individuals with Goldstein were also robbed.

According to the Chicago Tribune, there were a total of three robbery suspects. Those included a gunman and two accomplices, all “between 20 and 24 years old.”

Goldstein was taking part in a photo shoot in Albany Park. The shoot was intended to capture him and the essence of the neighborhood. Campaign manager Robert Murphy said the campaign stop was part of an “in-the-neighborhood kind of” theme.

The robbery suspects got away with cameras and cell phones, and Goldstein’s crew was shaken up but not harmed.

Ironically, Chicago has long been an unsuccessful experiment in gun control. The city had a complete ban on handgun ownership from 1982 to 2010. This means criminals had handguns for the purposes of robberies, murders, and assaults, while law-abiding citizens were defenseless. Homicide numbers betrayed this grime reality, with annual totals of 921 homicides in 1991, 940 in 1992, 930 homicides in 1994, etc.

The handgun ban is gone but the vestiges of gun control are alive and well. Rules and regulations on gun stores and gun store locations kept an artificial limit on the number of outlets where law-abiding city residents could acquire guns for self-defense. And there is a “violence tax” on all guns and ammunition, which means the guns and ammo sold at those five stores have an extra tax added them, thereby driving up the price of both.

Moreover, as with the rest of Illinois, Chicago residents must acquire a Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card in order to buy a gun at a gun store. A FOID card allows a resident to have a gun in his home, but the resident then has to acquire a concealed carry permit in order to carry the gun on his person for self-defense.

Even after jumping through the hoops and paying the fees associated with obtaining a FOID Card and a concealed permit, law-abiding Chicago residents live under the shadow of local and state governments that believe more gun control is the answer to gun control’s failure. On September 1, 2016, Breitbart News reported that Illinois Rep. Sonya Harper (D-6th) wanted to fight Chicago gun crime by requiring a unique serial number to be placed on the shell casing of every bullet sold in the state. And on April 24, 2017, Breitbart News reported that Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) wanted more regulations placed on Federally Licensed Firearms holders in the few gun stores in and around Chicago. Neither of these ideas would have reduced crime, but both would have driven the price of firearms and ammunition even higher, making the self-defense cost prohibitive for poorer Chicago residents.

Despite all these controls and proposed controls, Illinois Attorney General candidate Aaron Goldstein was robbed at gunpoint in Chicago on Thursday afternoon.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange