AP Photo/Mark Lennihan

Gun licensing schemes, such as those being advanced by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) in his presidential campaign, require you to obtain a license prior to getting a firearm. It doesn’t matter how you obtain it, either. If someone’s going to give it to you as a gift, you still need a license.

However, a New York man is in hot water after he used a gun he inherited to shoot a couple of repeat burglars.

Imagine being arrested and losing your home after two repeat burglars break into your house again and rush toward you with the possible intention of murdering you. This exact scenario played out in New York late last month thanks to the far-left state’s draconian gun control laws.

A 64-year-old Deerfield homeowner was charged with illegal firearm possession and arrested after he used a gun he’d inherited from his deceased father to kill two repeat burglars. Then upon his release from a jail a couple of days later, he found himself homeless because his house had been condemned.

Around 3:00 pm or so on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 28, Deerfield resident Ronald Stolarczyk reportedly returned home, only to find a burglary in progress.

“He told me that when they were coming up the stairs, that as they approached him, that he was scared to death and he thought they were going to kill him,” his attorney, Mark Wolber, said to local station WKTV, describing what’d occurred that day.

Now, in a lot of places, this would get the man hailed as a hero.

Not in New York.

Instead, Stolarczyk was charged with having an unlicensed firearm. He’s facing prison for using a gun he inherited–something he received by virtue of being his father’s heir and at a time when he may not have even been thinking about licensing–to defend himself against a couple of burglars who repeatedly victimized him and meant him harm.

That’s evil.

I don’t use that word lightly. I often try my damnedest to view the opposition as people who are supporting positions they think are best for this country. I sometimes don’t write that way, but I write when my emotions are up and not always taking the time to view it that way. I know a lot of you ascribe a lot less noble motives on the opposition, and I get it. Sometimes, I don’t either.

But, by and large, I do think most gun control activists–maybe not some of the louder voices or the politicians, necessarily, but the rank-and-file folks–are people who really think gun control will somehow save lives. I consider them wrong, but not evil.

Legislation like this, though? That’s a different matter entirely. This is evil, plain and simple.

A man is being prosecuted for having a gun, one he got via lawful means, but because he didn’t approach the government with hat in hands and say, “Mother may I?” first, he’s at risk of going to prison. I don’t see any way to phrase that other than to call it evil.

Licensing doesn’t stop criminals from having guns. It doesn’t stop people who have guns from doing bad or stupid things. They do nothing to save lives.

But the laws that require them damn sure destroys them. That, in my book, is enough reason to consider them evil.