New York City has the toughest gun control laws in the nation. It’s a gun control fan’s Utopia, or so it would seem. After all, they’ve heavily restricted so-called assault weapons. You need a permit to purchase a firearm and they’re all supposed to be registered. Don’t even talk about trying to get a carry permit, either.

Yet despite all this gun control, the city has been hit hard by the violence surge that’s taking place all over the country.

It looks like gun control doesn’t work that well, doesn’t it? Especially when you see stuff like this.

Nine suspects accused of trafficking dozens of guns from the south to New York were charged Wednesday — including a number of Brooklyn gang members who allegedly flaunted the illegal weapons in music videos, authorities said.

As part of the gun-running scheme, Duvaughn Wilson acted as a “straw purchaser” in Georgia, buying some 87 guns on behalf of his cohorts, federal authorities in the Southern District of New York charged.

Wilson’s co-defendants, including members of the Brooklyn-based “Blixky Gang” then either sold some of the weapons in Georgia, or brought them to New York on discount buses that run from the south to the Big Apple.

Some of the weapons were confiscated by law enforcement before they reached New York — but a number of the firearms ended up in the hands of the suspects, including Blixky members who flashed them in music videos.

“Oh, but that’s because of Georgia’s lax gun laws,” the typical anti-Second Amendment advocate would argue.

However, I’d point out that every part of this is illegal. These individuals were purchasing firearms illegally from the jump, then transporting them to an environment where they figured they could both use them for their music videos.

It should be noted that some of these guns were then resold in Georgia, which sounds to me as if despite the state’s supposedly lax gun laws, criminals still couldn’t buy their own guns.

Shocking.

Let’s also be clear. If these guys couldn’t have gotten the guns from Georgia, they’d have gotten them somewhere else. I know a lot of people don’t like that argument, but it’s true. Because it won’t stop the criminals, there’s no reason to stop the law-abiding from exercising their Second Amendment rights, now is there?

New York’s draconian gun control laws have failed, just as they’ve repeatedly failed over the century they’ve existed. Crime has ebbed and flowed in spite of those measures. In fact, New York is evidence that gun control doesn’t work, but that there are a lot of ways you can combat crime without them.

Now, we see just how much they fail.

Here’s the thing, folks. If you focus on the criminals, you don’t need a ton of gun control. It’s simply not necessary. Yet when you focus on the guns, you have to ignore the criminal to some degree, which means they become free to do whatever it is that they want. That’s just not a recipe for a good time.

New York City has failed. It’s well past time to give up the gun control ghost and start looking at things that might actually work.