The state of Illinois has some very strict gun control on the books. The largest city in the state, Chicago, likes to blame every other state for their problem with violence. They particularly like to blame Indiana for some reason.

Yet the truth of the matter is that bad guys get guns however they can, but mostly from stealing them.

Illinois should be familiar with the concept after a recent break-in.

Winthrop Harbor police say they are looking for four people who broke into a gun and hunting store early Tuesday and stole 39 firearms.

The break-in happened at the Outdoorsman store in the 200 block of North Sheridan Road and was captured on security camera video, Withrop Harbor police Detective Sergeant Chris Willets said Tuesday.

The video showed a dark-colored Toyota RAV-4 drive up to the store, and four people exit from the vehicle at 12:34 a.m. Using crowbars and bolt cutters, the group broke through a glass door and then breached a security gate inside, Willets said.

In total, the quartet stole 32 handguns, five rifles, and two shotguns.

What’s worse is that they failed to show their FOID card prior to the theft and failed to fill out Form 4473 or complete the NICS check. What is this world coming to? What happened to all the good, law-abiding criminals that might break the law, but they didn’t break the law?

This is the world we live in, though. You just can’t trust the bad guys anymore.

Yes, I’m being ridiculous on purpose. That’s because there are people who legitimately think FOIDs and background checks actually stop criminals from buying guns. They think the solution is more of these things because they tried them and they didn’t work, so they want to double down on failed policies.

They don’t seem to understand that the criminal gun market exists outside the law and always has. Criminals may, from time to time, try to buy a firearm from a gun store, but those are the rare exceptions. Instead, they buy them from the guy they know down the street who has a trunk full of stolen guns. They drop a few bucks and walk away with a new firearm that they can use for whatever they want.

Hell, half of them think there’s a gun registry in every single state, so why would they go to a gun store and end up in that registry? I mean, no, there isn’t one in most places, but most people seem to think there is because of what they see on TV. It governs their actions.

But, that won’t matter. Those guns will end up in criminal hands and those people will use those guns for criminal acts, acts which will then be used to justify gun control that impacts law-abiding citizens but does virtually nothing to stop the criminals.

This is just how it goes and unless people wake up to this fact, we’re not likely to see anything change. The criminals aren’t law-abiding gun owners, and the sooner people understand that, the better.