The legal age to buy a handgun in the United States is 21. You can buy a rifle in most places at 18, but to buy a handgun legally, you have to be at least 21. This is the law. For better or worse, that’s what’s on the books.

This is, at its core, a gun control law. It’s a law meant to restrict gun ownership to some degree.

However, a 13-year-old in Opelika, Alabama just provided a crushing example of how gun control fails.

A young teen is facing a slew of felony charges after Opelika police believe at just 13-years-old he was armed with a gun when he allegedly committed several robberies.

The teen was arrested Tuesday, February 18th after investigators identified him as an accomplice in several criminal incidents from December, January, and February.

The teen is facing Robbery, First Degree, of the Murf-Mart located at 1001 Frederick Avenue on December 15th.

He’s also charged with Receiving Stolen Property, First Degree, in reference to a stolen car taken from the 3300 block of 3rd Avenue on January 6th.

He’s also facing several other charges and may be facing still others.

However, what’s not in the story was just how a 13-year-old got his hands on a firearm. That’s the question a lot of people may be asking, and I’ll admit that I’m curious as well. After all, aren’t gun control laws like age limits expressly created to prevent people like this kid from getting guns?

It doesn’t really matter how he got it, though, because any potential scenario you care to name is evidence that gun control doesn’t freaking work. This is a child. No 13-year-old boy is going to look man enough to buy a gun from a lawful seller and we all know it. This isn’t a case of someone who thought he looked 21.

Oh no, this is likely a case of him having either stolen the gun–after all, it seems clear he has no issue with taking other people’s things–or buying it from someone selling black market guns. Those folks aren’t known to carry out background checks or ask for ID, after all. They wouldn’t care about selling a gun to a child.

Most 13-year-old kids are sitting around playing X-Box or something. They’re goofing off on the internet or watching YouTube videos of questionable comedic value. They’re not interested in committing armed robbery. Anti-gunners would say that even if they were, they couldn’t because of the gun control laws.

Yet here is a 13-year-old who was interested in such a thing and guess what? He got a gun just fine.

There is one thing to be thankful to this kid for, though. He’s provided an important example of just how gun control doesn’t work the way it’s intended and it never, ever will. The bad will get guns while the good obey the laws that turn them into victims. That’s just an inviolable rule that isn’t going away just because it’s inconvenient to some people.

After all, if a 13-year-old kid can get a gun, just who the hell else can get one?