By Jade Yan
Over 20 years ago, Sontcerá McWilliams was driving her car on Chicago’s South Side near 83rd Street when she got into an accident. The man who’d crashed into her saw her gun, which had been in the trunk with her groceries. Though she had a license, she was taken to jail and charged with unlawful use of a weapon, she said. Three months later, McWilliams, from Chicago’s Jefferson Park neighborhood, was fired from her new job because her weapon charge was still in the system as a felony, not the misdemeanor she had ended up with, she said.