Firearm thefts are a serious problem. No one wants to see guns in the hands of bad people, and regardless of who ends up with them, stolen guns are stolen property. They belong with their rightful owners no matter what.

Not only that, but stolen firearms are often used in such a way that anti-gun proponents can point to the misuse as justification for more gun control. The fact that stolen guns, by definition, mean they will never be subject to gun control seems completely irrelevant to them.

However, Seattle Police say one man has stolen dozens of guns and thousands of rounds of ammo.

SEATTLE – Seattle police are investigating after they said a man stole at least a dozen guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition from a house in South Seattle Wednesday.

…

A Beacon Hill resident called police to report the apparent burglary after arriving at his home in the 4000 block of 14th Avenue South and finding several empty shipping boxes on his front porch. The boxes, where the ammunition had been stored, were pried open and emptied.

Well, let’s hope he also stole a gun safe. He wouldn’t want to run afoul of Seattle’s safe storage law, now would he?

Oh, and I hope he went through the background check before he stole those guns. After all, Washington has universal background checks, so the fact that he didn’t steal them from a gun store shouldn’t matter.

Also, if he’s going to sell those stolen guns to his criminal friends, I hope he knows an FFL who will conduct the transfer in compliance with those universal background check laws.

Sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it? Well, yeah, it does. We all know that criminals don’t obey these laws. They steal guns. They buy guns on the black market. They lie on federal forms to buy guns through law-abiding gun dealers. They bypass every law created to keep them disarmed and do so with impunity.

But still, Seattle keeps clamoring for more laws in some misguided effort to keep guns out of these people’s hands.

I get the motivation. I really and truly do. But I also recognize that if you want to combat violent crime, you’re not going to do it by trying to restrict the weapon. England tried that and what happened? Crime went out of control because the law-abiding were unarmed. While it does look like they did a good job of keeping guns out of the hands of a lot of criminals as well–something that wouldn’t happen here–they didn’t curb violent crime. The bad guys just started using knives.

Then London doubled down.

You can give a law-abiding man a rocket launcher, and he’ll never be a problem. The violent criminal will murder with their bare hands.

Why is this so damn hard for anti-gunners to see? The violent will be violent, and that’s why gun control is a problem.

Anti-gunners will claim that all laws affect criminals, so by our logic, we shouldn’t have laws against murder, etc. The problem with that argument is that murder laws exist to stop otherwise decent people from going too far and giving us grounds to punish those who do. Gun laws, however, only affect the law-abiding citizens of this land and seek to prevent an action.

Good people have trouble getting guns while criminals go right on getting them.

And they don’t get their background checks or store their weapons safely.