To hear gun control activists tell it, if you make it harder for law-abiding citizens to obtain firearms, you’re also making it harder for criminals to obtain firearms as well. This, of course, makes perfect sense…if you’re an absolute moron.

Making that argument suggests that the way criminals get firearms is either through the stores directly or through buyers. While straw buys can and do happen, they aren’t responsible for arming most criminals. Instead, they count for only a small portion of total guns that end up in prohibited hands.

So how do they end up in criminal hands? Well, you have people like this:

Salih Reed, 26, of Pineville and Jessica Moore, 23, of Alexandria were arrested Sunday afternoon in Alexandria. They are being held in the Rapides Parish Jail awaiting transfer to Bossier Parish.

Reed and Moore were booked on 63 counts of theft of a firearm and one count of felony property damage.

And I bet they didn’t even fill out a 4473 before leaving with those guns, too!

Seriously, this is how criminals are getting their guns. They’re stealing them. And contrary to what many think, you’re not going to actually stop gun thefts with new laws dictating how weapons are stored. All you’re going to manage to do is make life untenable for the law-abiding.

What criminals do is break the law. The idea that they’ll be thwarted by just one more law isn’t misguided. It’s idiotic.

All new gun laws do is create opportunities for criminals. They can look at what’s not allowed anymore and create a whole new market for illicit transactions.

Correction: The legislation created the market. They’re just serving it.

It’s unlikely these two intended to hold onto all 63 firearms for their personal use. While the average law-abiding gun owner may think nothing of having a lot of guns around the house, I doubt a couple of criminals would steal that many just to keep them around.

No, they were likely planning on selling them on the streets; selling them to people who can’t purchase a firearm legally. That is how criminals get their guns, ladies and gentleman. They either steal them themselves or they buy them from someone who stole them.

And yes, occasionally, from someone who bought them lawfully with the intent to tell them illegally at a profit. Yet when you do that, you’re competing with guns someone stole and will sell for a fraction of the price, so common sense alone should tell you how rare that actually is.

The worst part about this is that we can point to this time and time again and yell at the top of our lungs what’s really happening, and some anti-Second Amendment dipstick will still believe that the secret to keeping guns out of criminal hands is to just pass one or two more laws and all will be well.

I honestly can’t fathom how you can believe that despite the ample evidence out there that it simply does. Not. Work.

Then again, there’s plenty of reason to believe gun control is not now, nor has ever been about keeping guns out of criminal hands, just keeping guns out of ours.