New York City has the strictest gun control laws in the nation. It’s difficult to even buy a gun in the Big Apple, much less carry one lawfully. The laws have been on the books for over a century and the city has watched violent crime rates ebb and flow without any regard for such measures. Such is the nature of life in the big city.

But, with all those gun control laws, there shouldn’t be any illegal guns in the city, right? Right?

Well…

Eight people accused of dealing drugs and guns in southeast Queens were arrested as part of two long-term investigations, the Queens district attorney’s office announced Saturday.

…

Among them is Jamaica resident Charles Gillespie, 19, who faces charges of selling six firearms, multiple high-capacity magazines and several rounds of ammunition to an undercover detective.

Gillespie sold the guns for $500 to $1,100 each and contacted customers weekly to advertise new offerings from his supplier, prosecutors said.

The eight arrests stem from an investigation dubbed Operation Blast Off that started in November 2018 and focused on Jamaica resident Steven Campbell, 37, who prosecutors say sold drugs to an undercover officer outside a Queens gym.

UNPOSSIBLE!

This simply cannot be! I have it on good authority that gun control laws work!

Of course, they’re not wrong. Gun control laws do work. They work to keep guns out of the law-abiding citizens’ hands while completely ignoring the fact that criminals obtain guns through illegal means in the first place. They work to hurt ordinary Americans and their ability to keep and bear arms while doing nothing to interfere with the black market.

Oh, gun control laws work, they just don’t do what proponents say they’ll do.

Instead, criminals will continue to use illicit means to obtain firearms. Guns will follow the demand, much like any other product you care to name. Banning it doesn’t change that demand all that much, it just pushes it underground. For those who were already underground with their demand, very little changes.

New York is a prime example of that, too.

It wasn’t all that long ago, really, when New York was a crime-ridden hellscape that would make today’s Chicago look like Small Town, USA. It was a dystopian nightmare despite–or, perhaps, because of–all their gun control laws. Those laws long predated their decline, of course, but those laws persisted through the worst of it.

Bad people got guns just fine. They also hurt people with bats, knives, brass knuckles, hammers, or whatever else they could get their hands on. The gun laws did nothing to stop the crime.

Yet their gun control laws were so intrusive that there wasn’t anything else they could do on that front. They had to start working on alternatives. They had to look beyond guns and, sure enough, they reduced their crime rate. While New York is more dangerous than most small towns, it’s far from the most dangerous city by a long shot.

Regardless, though, there are still bad people in the city. There always will be.

That means that regardless of the laws, those bad people will get guns. They always will.