The state of California, as an anti-gun state, has an awful lot of gun-free zones. Among those zones are going to be college campuses. I mean, it’s not like the Golden State is ever going to be remotely interested in campus carry. Not anytime soon, anyway.

Yet crime doesn’t care about these gun-free zones.

Or, if a criminal does, it’s because they see them more as victim disarmament zones. Yet a recent carjacking at UC Berkeley had me thinking about how the problem with gun-free zones extends even further.

A man had his car forcibly taken from him in the Underhill parking garage at 2616 Haste St. (at College Avenue) on Sunday night, according to UC Berkeley police.

Four people came up to the man at 9:30 p.m. as he was approaching his car, a 2018 grey Ford Fusion. Two of the men had handguns, and they took his car and other property, according to UC Berkeley police. The four men then drove away in the Fusion and an older white Honda sedan, according to police. The victim was not injured in the carjacking.

This was the parking garage, the kind of place that is often the last point someone can be armed at a gun-free zone, though not necessarily in California.  While it’s unlikely that this driver would have been armed otherwise, it wasn’t remotely possible for him to be armed. Even if the parking garage was fine for him to have a firearm, he likely still would have been disarmed.

See, the problem with gun-free zones isn’t just that they disarm you at the doors or property line. A case could be argued that if they provide sufficient security, you aren’t less safe in those areas.

The issue is that a gun-free zone requires you to be gun-free at some point before you reach that point. If you’re going to a mall that’s gun-free, you have to leave your gun in the car at a minimum, if not at home entirely. That means you’re vulnerable long before you reach any security that can, theoretically, protect you.

And with car break-ins being a thing, it’s understandable that some would leave their guns at home if they’re going to be spending much of their trip in a gun-free zone.

So, tell me just who provides security for that individual to and from their home? Who patrols the parking lots to not just keep people safe to and from their vehicles, but to prevent their cars from being broken into and their firearms stolen? Who?

The answer, of course, is no one.

Even if you could guarantee perfect safety within a gun-free zone–something no one can actually guarantee–that guarantee won’t extend beyond a certain point. However, the regulations that disarm law-abiding citizens do.

This is why no matter how much some people seem to believe that a gun-free zone offers perfect security, those of us on the gun rights side aren’t remotely interested. Even if we believed in the security, we can recognize the truth that such security will end well before we can rearm ourselves.

No one is responsible for keeping us safe. The courts have ruled that it’s our responsibility. Gun-free zones make that impossible, and they do it well past the front doors and out into the world in general.