Joe Walsh On Concealed Carry: Ex-Illinois Congressman Urges Civil Disobedience, Ignoring Of Gun Ban

Former U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh, long a Tea Party favorite, is urging Illinoisans to "break the law" amid the state's current lack of a concealed carry law.

On his blog Friday, Walsh -- who now has a radio show on the conservative Chicago-based station WIND-AM (560) -- wrote that "it's time for civil disobedience" because "we’re at a point in this stupid state where we need to begin to break the law."

Walsh pointed to 62-year-old shop owner Luis Quizhpe's baseball bat battle with two armed robbers as an example of the need for more Chicagoans in particular to legally take arms.

"I don’t care if we don’t have a conceal carry law right now," Walsh wrote. "There isn’t a law-abiding citizen in this city that doesn’t have the right to protect themselves … and if that means breaking the law to do it, we’re going to do it.”

His comments previewed a Friday interview with conservative musician Ted Nugent who's previously compared gun control to racial segregation and called for "a Rosa Parks from ‘We the People'" to step up on the matter. (Listen to a clip below.)

Walsh added to the Daily Herald that he suspected his call for Illinoisans to "stop being victims" will help "subdue violence" in the state.

"I think that if those two thugs knew that that owner of that shop was armed and protected, they would have thought twice about busting up in there," he told the paper.

Illinois has been tasked by a federal court to come up with a concealed carry law by June 8 after its previous gun ban was ruled unconstitutional. Discussions on the issue have been tense, causing one Republican lawmaker to compare gun control to castration.

Meanwhile, a new poll commissioned by the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence showed strong statewide support among Illinois voters for stricter gun control laws, particularly for criminal background checks on every gun sale.