Critics of our gun rights argue that such rights need to be curtailed for the greater good. They believe that gun control laws actually stop criminals, at least to some degree. As such, they think we all need to suck it up a little because, in their minds, it’s a small price to pay for safety.

Take Massachusetts, for example. While the nation is seeing huge spikes in violent crime, none of that is happening in anti-gun Massachusetts, now is it?

Oh, my bad.

Over the last 12 months, Springfield police have seen a decline in calls for service, a sharp decline in the number of arrests, and an even sharper decline in the number of drug raids and drug arrests.

The explanation is simple enough: COVID-19.

But as some law enforcement metrics are going down, others — like the number of illegal and unlawful guns on the streets of the city — are going up.

Way up.

With a week left in the year, city police have confiscated 259 illegal and unlawful guns. That’s the most in the last five years and a 33% increase from 2019. Forty percent of those guns were seized during narcotics operations — nearly double the amount from 2019.

Police say the reason these numbers are increasing is the same as the reason others are declining.

It’s because of COVID-19.

UNPOSSIBLE!

I have it on excellent authority–Brady and Gifford and their Bloomberg-funded buddies, don’t ya know?–that gun control makes this sort of thing virtually impossible. If you have tough gun laws, criminals simply won’t get guns.

There’s no way this could happen.

And yet, here we are. That leads us to ask why?

The pandemic has had a direct impact on law enforcement in Massachusetts. Trials have been delayed or postponed, judges have seemed reluctant to order any by the most dangerous inmates held, and the state’s highest court in the spring ordered the release of hundreds of nonviolent, low-risk defendants awaiting trial.

Many in law enforcement see these as contributing to the surge in gun crimes in cities throughout the Northeast, as dangerous offenders are back out on the streets committing crimes instead of being in custody. Public defenders dispute that charge, calling it political grandstanding.

Except, violence has increased pretty much everywhere. It’s not unique to Springfield, Massachusetts by any stretch of the imagination. It’s happening everywhere, including anti-gun states like New York, Illinois, and California.

If gun control worked so well, then just how do we explain any of these facts.

Then again, it’s not like gun control’s success or failure is relevant for anti-gunners. If it fails, it’s proof that we need more of it. If it succeeds, it’s proof we need more of it. Kind of funny how that works, now isn’t it?

At the end of the day, though, some places don’t value our basic civil liberties and others do. Massachusetts doesn’t and we can plainly see that despite all their anti-gun actions in past decades, it did absolutely nothing to actually stop gun crimes in their state.

Hell, it doesn’t look like it even slowed them down.