Gun control activists would have you believe that with sufficiently strict gun control laws, you can prevent people who aren’t allowed to have guns from getting them.

I suppose that in theory, sure. If you could create a law that made every gun everywhere vanish, then sure. Maybe you could stop bad people from getting guns in such a scenario, but since that’s the stuff of science fiction, it’s best not to pretend there’s any reality to such an idea.

Instead, we live in a world where bad people do bad things and those bad people will often do whatever they can to get guns. That includes, of course, stealing them.

Even age limits on who can have a firearm aren’t much good in the face of someone determined to break the law.

Four teenagers were arrested last month and accused of breaking into a St. Nicholas gun store to steal guns, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office announced Thursday.

JSO said the four teens — 16, 15, 13 and 13 — used a crowbar to break into the store and took eight guns, six pistols and two rifles.

After they left the store, the teens had to come back because one of them left a bag and two cell phones, JSO said. When they returned they were met by the owner of the store who saw them and called police after the teens took off running.

Officers eventually chased down one of the teens right away and later arrested the other three.

Investigators were able to recover three pistols and one rifle, but the other guns are still missing.

Only one was old enough to have his driver’s license, yet all four were involved in a break-in at a gun store.

Children, really.

Worse, though, was that they didn’t even fill out a Form 4473 or undergo a background check. I mean, how can we make sure the children stealing guns are entitled to have them if they don’t follow the proper steps?

Which, of course, is why all the consternation about background checks is so idiotic. People aren’t buying guns in gun stores. They’re generally not buying them from law-abiding gun owners, either.

No, they’re stealing them or they’re buying them from other people who stole them. It’s just that simple.

If you take away the right to own a firearm, though, you don’t cut off the supply as some people believe. You simply force them to look for other sources. If making something illegal for anyone to own cut off the supply for bad actors, then we wouldn’t have heroin, meth, or crack addicts, now would we?

Someone will always step in to supply a need. Right now, though, that need is supplied by thieves, even those who may be so young they should be playing video games while watching cringe compilations on YouTube.

Unfortunately, they weren’t doing that. They were allegedly breaking into a gun store and stealing firearms, most of which are still out there, likely in criminal hands. If you can’t stop children from getting guns, how are you going to stop the truly hardened criminals from getting them?

I’m pretty sure a sternly worded law isn’t going to cut it with those kinds of people.