The state of Missouri isn’t a gun control state by any stretch of the imagination. Even so, there are a few rules in place like you’ll find in almost every other state in the country. For better or worse, such is the state of the country.

However, within any state, you’ll have people who will try to manipulate the rules in place to have the meaning most convenient to their personal cause. In the cast of an anti-gun lawmaker, the broadest possible interpretation of a gun control law would be the prime example.

You know, people who try stuff like this.

A move is underway at City Hall to designate St. Louis parks as child care facilities so they’re exempt from a Missouri law allowing people to carry concealed firearms without permits and training.

A bill to be introduced Friday by Alderman Cara Spencer, D-20th Ward, also would require signs explaining the gun prohibition to be posted at all park entrances, parking areas, playgrounds and sports fields.

“It’s time to push the envelope here,” Spencer said Thursday. “The state Legislature doesn’t understand the level of gun violence here.”

Oh no, they understand it quite well. They just know that idiotic stunts like this won’t actually do anything except make it impossible for law-abiding citizens who protect their families in St. Louis parks.

Look, this isn’t rocket science.

St. Louis does legitimately have a problem with violence. However, much of that violence is tied to other forms of criminal activity, namely gang-related violence. In other words, these are people who know they’re going to commit a criminal act well ahead of time.

Now, with that in mind, I’d love for Alderman Spencer to explain just how designating parks as “child care facilities” will actually stop people already intending to break the law from breaking one more? It won’t. It won’t have any impact on those people at all.

What it will do, however, is either restrict law-abiding parents from carrying guns to defend their families with or it will keep parents away from the city’s parks because they don’t want to risk not being able to protect their children. Oh, some will be oblivious because they’re just as deluded as Spencer. They’ll think this kind of thing works.

It doesn’t.

Meanwhile, there’s absolutely no reason for criminals to change their behavior.

Then again, this is all predicated on Spencer being able to accomplish this and it holding up in court. I honestly think the city would be hardpressed to justify public parks that have no full-time staff taking care of children constitutes a childcare facility by any stretch of the imagination. They’re free-standing environments where kids play. That’s not child care.

But Spencer, like many of her anti-gun brethren, will use any potential opening she can find to drive a wedge in and expand the scope of existing gun control laws. Especially in places where they know there’s no hope of actually creating new laws.

That’s what’s absolutely pathetic about this kind of thing.