The shooting in Philadelphia earlier this week shook the nation, particularly because it came so closely on the wake of three mass shootings. We later learned that this was a different animal entirely.

In Philly, a man who is probably best described as a career criminal decided to take a shot at law enforcement officers as they were serving a warrant. This wasn’t an active shooter trying to kill as many innocents as possible. This was a desperate criminal who thought he’d rather die in a shootout with cops than return to prison (and then changed his mind).

Yet that’s not enough to stop some officials from calling for more gun control.

One day after a gunman shot six Philadelphia police officers in an incident that brought unwanted international attention to Philadelphia, lawmakers, most of them Democrats, and members of the law enforcement community gathered inside a packed room inside City Hall to urge elected officials to pass stronger gun control legislation.

“I don’t now what has to happen next? There was a time when this was seen as a problem in the inner cities,” state Sen. Shariff Street said. “But we are 20 years beyond Columbine now and look at the gun violence that we continue to experience.

“Synagogues, elementary schools full of young children, a Walmart,” Street continued, referencing mass shootings both recent and old. “And now yesterday. When are we going to be brave enough as a society to do something about this epidemic that we are under?”

Street was just one of many speakers, including Gov. Tom Wolf, Mayor Jim Kenney, Police Commissioner Richard Ross, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans and state lawmakers. They stood shoulder to shoulder as they called out for better gun control.

Yet there he was, armed with an AR-15.

The shooter, Maurice Hill, was a career criminal and reportedly involved in the illegal drug trade. He had every contact necessary to secure guns on the black market. In fact, that’s most likely what he did in the first place, meaning new regulations on law-abiding gun owners and gun buyers won’t stop someone like Hill.

As Cam also noted on Thursday:

Not one of these politicians or pundits dared to address the central flaw in their argument: The drug laws in this country didn’t prevent a violent criminal like Maurice Hill from allegedly possessing and dealing drugs, so how would their gun control laws work any better at preventing someone like Hill from possessing and illegally using a firearm?

“I’m a little angry about someone having all that weaponry, all that firepower, but we’ll get to that another day,” Mayor Jim Kenney said.

Mayor Kenney was right to avoid getting into a discussion about gun control while Hill was still holed up in the row home, but when he does “get to that” conversation, I suspect that the fact that Hill was no stranger to the court system and was allegedly involved in illegal drug sales will be ignored in favor of pushing laws that are aimed at legal gun owners.

Well, it was. It was ignored because that’s just how anti-gunners work. They ignore inconvenient facts that destroy their narrative. In this case, the fact that Hill was legally prohibited from owning any firearm is completely ignored.

It’ll continue getting ignored so long as anti-gun lawmakers can try and use it to advance an agenda. “Truth,” not facts, in other words, but when your ideology also allows that truth can be subjective, it’s not even that.