California has the most restrictive set of guns laws in the country. For the average citizen, certain guns are forbidden, firearms that you or I can just walk into a store and buy.

However, some guns are restricted only for police. The idea is that police officers are a special class of people and that the laws that apply to we lesser beings shouldn’t apply to them. After all, they’re police officers. Surely they would never break the laws they were sworn to uphold.

We see how that worked out.

It seems, though, that in Los Angeles–a city that really likes them some gun control–the police academy has its own gun store. You’d think that under those conditions, the LAPD would take special care to make sure the people running that gun store are of the utmost moral fiber, right?

Well, if they did, it looks like they botched the job.

A former manager of the gun store at the Los Angeles Police Academy has been charged with stealing more than 20 guns and illegally selling them to several officers.

Archi Duenas, 34, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges including grand theft of a firearm, grand theft by embezzlement and illegal possession of an assault weapon, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

Duenas also pleaded not guilty to 22 misdemeanor counts of unlawfully selling or transferring a firearm without a license and one misdemeanor count of carrying a loaded and concealed firearm in a vehicle.

None of the police officers and a deputy sheriff who bought guns from him have been charged. According to law enforcement sources not authorized to discuss the investigation, one of the buyers was an LAPD captain.

In February, the LAPD commercial crimes division began investigating the disappearance of at least 35 firearms from the Los Angeles Police Revolver and Athletic Club gun store, a private organization whose members are law enforcement, after a discrepancy was found in the inventory.

Investigators a month later arrested Duenas. In the charges, Duenas is accused of taking at least 21 guns during a two-year period beginning in early 2018, then selling the guns, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

You’d think with all those gun control laws–assuming they worked, of course–there’d be something about not stealing guns or selling them illegally.

Oh, wait, there are. Duenas is alleged to basically have not cared about any of those so long as he could fatten his pockets.

His customers were, apparently, police officers as well. It seems that the very people charged with enforcing gun laws can’t even be bothered to follow them. Meanwhile, had Duenas sold guns to private citizens, we all know they’d have been hauled in and charged by now.

The truth is that some people will always figure that gun control policies shouldn’t apply to them. From police officers to street-level gangbangers, there will always be those who want a gun and don’t really care what the law has to say about it. It’s why gun control is always doomed to fail.

While some might point out that Duenas was arrested, I have to point out that there are a whole lot more people doing the same thing who haven’t been caught.

Gun control doesn’t work and it never will. It’s past time to give up the delusion.