We keep hearing that tough gun laws stop crime. Anti-gun zealots say it all the time. While we keep pointing out that no, it doesn’t work that way, the zealots just roll their eyes and make mutterings over how cute we are with our silly ignorance. Of course gun laws work, they argue. Apparently, criminals are known for following the law in their worlds.

How, then, do they explain a double homicide in Boston, where gun laws tend to be pretty strict?

Police are looking for the gunman in a double shooting in Mission Hill They said they have witnesses and surveillance video and want the public to step up.

Some in the neighborhood said they do and are as frustrated as the police. Residents made their way around the crime scene tape Wednesday night. “We definitely want it to stop,” said Manny Oliva, a concerned resident.

Around 5 p.m., Boston Police say a man walked up to two others sitting in a red car and shot them. They were on Parker Street just one block off Tremont.

“A lot of traffic was in the area, which is always scary, it’s very brazen,” Boston Police Commissioner William Evans said.

The injured men are 19 and 21 years old. One just showed up at the hospital. The other managed to drive a couple blocks away and was then taken by ambulance.

“We had officers in the area, we’ve put a lot of officers in the area since that shooting and they heard the shots and they were here within seconds,” Evans said.

Clearly, both police and residents are mistaken. With Massachusetts’s strict gun laws, there’s absolutely no way this crime could have happened. Just like the gunfight in New York City recently between two groups of men. It’s unpossible!

Of course, there is an alternate theory worth exploring, considering the circumstances. It’s entirely possible that criminals will get their hands on guns no matter what you do, and so penalizing the law-abiding and taking away their right to arm themselves for self-defense is pointless.

Just a thought here.

As I’ve said before, if you want to combat violence, you don’t do it by going after the tools used. The best you can hope for is the violent people to resort to other weapons. That’s hardly an improvement on the situation.

Instead, you need to go after the roots of violence itself. And I’m not talking about drugs or gangs, even. Those are symptoms of a deeper problem. It’s beyond time for people to get down and look at the nitty gritty and address those core problems first and foremost.

After you do that, you’re probably going to find that restrictions on firearms are irrelevant. Violence will drop, over time, because the need to pursue a lifestyle that requires violence has dissipated. Remove the perceived need for violence, remove the violence.

But that takes work and it doesn’t make for great soundbites for liberal politicians. It doesn’t happen overnight, either, which makes addressing it unattractive to liberal politicians. That and the fact that it would involve something more than a government program and bunch of taxpayer money also plays a factor.

Either way, this particular crime? Horrible as it is, couldn’t have happened. That’s what the liberal politicians tell me when they focus on guns and nothing else. With their strict gun laws, this double murder in Boston has to be a figment of our imagination.