How well are New York’s restrictive gun control laws working to actually control illicit gun sales? Not well at all, at least based on the arrest of an 18-year-old in Oswego County, who’s now facing more than 50 felonies after authorities discovered a cache of illegally possessed firearms for the second time in less than a year.

David M. Desimone III was the subject of a raid last November, but police returned to his home last week and discovered even more firearms, allegedly hidden in a secret room in the teen’s home.

On Thursday troopers executed a search warrant at his home and found ghost guns, parts for long guns, fully automatic machine guns, body armor and silencers, troopers said.

Troopers seized machine guns modified to be fully automatic.

Many items had serial numbers removed and/or defaced, troopers said. Multiple items were “ghost” long guns and handgun parts, they said.

Desimone had been selling the guns in person and on the “dark web,” troopers said.

Troopers seized at least 39 guns, according to court records.

In November 2022, a search warrant was executed at the teen’s home, troopers said. An Extreme Risk Protection Order was put in place to try to prevent him from buying more, troopers said.

Troopers, after learning more, returned Thursday and found a secret room that contained guns.

Rex Heuermann, 59, was arrested last Thursday as he left his architecture firm in Manhattan after a 13-year hunt for the so-called Long Island serial killer.

The man was charged with the murder of three women whose bodies and remains were found along the same stretch of beach between 2010 and 2011. Police said they believe he could be linked to at least one more victim.

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said the detectives agreed to move in on Heuermann when he could not access his many guns.

Tierney said: “We wanted to take him into custody somewhere outside the house, because of access to those weapons.”

Former NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said the decision was “safer for everybody” and ensured the arrest did not escalate into a violent confrontation.

He told Good Morning America: “You don’t want to go into that house – you want to take him off-premise. This way it’s safer for everybody.”

If police knew the guns were there, then odds are the vast majority of them were legally acquired, which means the police in Suffolk County signed off on his gun permits. In order to obtain a pistol license, even to simply possess a handgun in the home, applicants are required to demonstrate “good moral character”; something that by definition serial killers are lacking.

If New York’s gun permitting and licensing laws can’t even stop a suspected serial killer from lawfully obtaining a firearm and aren’t preventing teens from illegally obtaining and selling guns of his own, can the left please stop pretending that these laws are vitally important in protecting public safety? At best these are charges that can be brought after the fact when criminals are caught, but they’re also preventing responsible citizens from exercising their fundamental right to protect themselves at the same time. Seems to me there’s a better way that’s being completely ignored by New York lawmakers; ending their insane obsession of reducing the number of legal gun owners and ensuring actual consequences for the perpetrators of violent crimes.