There are a few products out there that seem to terrify some people. Here in my neck of the woods, liquor stores have to be so many feet from schools, churches, etc. It’s like some people think the alcohol will just jump out of the stores and into kids’ backpacks when they walk home from school.

However, I also understand the logic. Alcoholics often don’t wait to get home before opening up the bottle and drinking, meaning that there’s a bit of risk involved with being near a liquor store. It’s not a great reason, but it is a bit of one.

Yet in San Antonio, it seems the city council is considering similar regulations for gun stores.

A public safety initiative aimed at reducing gun violence has City Council members divided.

District 6 Councilman Greg Brockhouse pointed to a yearly decline in gun violence in the Alamo City as part of the reason he opposes regulations.

“The problem, though, with regulating gun sales or gun control, is: We don’t need it,” Brockhouse said. “Let’s not penalize responsible gun owners and gun sellers and make their lives more difficult.”

Under the proposal, gun shops wouldn’t be allowed to open within 1,000 feet of a school or church, and they would only be allowed to open in areas designated for general commercial use. Existing shops would be grandfathered in.

District 2 Councilman William “Cruz” Shaw supports the proposal.

“We aren’t trying to take guns away from lawful gun owners. Our intentions are solely to address gun violence by looking into any and all possible local angles,” Shaw said in a statement.

This won’t be about taking guns out of people’s hands, but it is about gun control. Frankly, it’s a brain-dead way to combat violence, even if you somehow believe gun control somehow reduces crime. I mean, does Shaw mean to tell me that if a store is a few hundred feet to the left, those who may use illicit means to buy a gun through legal channels would suddenly be unable to find the store?

It’s beyond ridiculous to pretend that restricting gun stores to certain portions of the city would have any appreciable impact on violence.

For one thing, as we’ve noted before, criminals usually don’t use gun stores. They buy them on the streets because they’re felons already and couldn’t buy a gun legally if their lives depended on it. Those that do are using false identities and are already breaking the law, but shifting where they have to go to break those laws will have absolutely no impact on whether they will or won’t.

All it will do is make life difficult for the gun stores, almost universally small businesses just trying to get by in this world. Now they’ll also have to factor in schools and churches into their equations if they look to move or open a store. They’ll have to shop for a location in a commercial section of town, rather than somewhere conveniently located for their customers, which will make business a bit more difficult to attract.

But crime? I can guarantee you that this would amount to less than spitting in the ocean.