Machine guns are among the most tightly registered products in the United States. Regular people can’t legally buy one built after 1986 and the handful remaining from before that date cost as much as a car or even, depending on the weapon, a house.

They’re not exactly affordable or readily available.

Yet despite all that gun control, they still end up in strange places. Now, a Navy sailor has been convicted for helping some of them end up in such places.

A Navy sailor based in Virginia was convicted Monday of receiving, possessing, and selling multiple unregistered machine guns months after a search of his home uncovered a veritable arsenal of heavy weaponry.

Master-at-Arms 1st Class Patrick Tate Adamiak, 28, was first arrested and indicted in April. According to court documents, between October 2021 and April 2022, Tate — who was not a registered firearms dealer — sold unregistered parts and complete weapons to undercover agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

A subsequent search of Adamiak’s home uncovered 25 unregistered machine guns, as well as two grenade launchers and two anti-tank missile launchers, according to federal prosecutors.

First, for those unfamiliar with Navy ranks, those are made up of two components. One is the rank as most think of it–whether they’re petty officer 3rd class, 2nd class, or chief petty officer, or whatever. The first part describes their job.

For example, I was a Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class when I got out.

Adamiak was a Master-at-Arms 1st Class, though. In short, that means he was a Navy cop. Yes, the shore patrol can be made up of people from various ratings throughout the Navy, but a Master-at-Arms is a specialist in law enforcement and force protection.

And that is who was selling machine guns and sporting their own collection of missile launchers.

The investigation into Adamiak began in October of 2021 when he was contacted for parts for a Thompson submachine gun by ATF agents. From there, he kept providing products until he included receivers for machine guns.

Now, he’s been locked up.

Yet everything about this is a firm reminder of just how the Law of Supply and Demand works with regard to black market guns. If there is a demand, someone will step up to supply the goods to meet that demand. The more the demand, the higher the price commanded and the more likely others will step in to meet that demand and get a piece of that pie.

Adamiak did just that, and there’s literally nothing that would have stopped him from doing so.

As a member of the Navy and a master-at-arms, this is someone who had been vetted previously. There was literally nothing in his background up until this point that would have raised a red flag, otherwise, he wouldn’t have been in this role.

Yet you want to tell me that just another couple of gun control laws would stop this guy?

He was selling machine guns, for crying out loud. I can’t get one legally based on the current laws, but this guy was selling them out of his house where he also had missile and grenade launchers.

Sorry, but if this doesn’t show you how gun control laws don’t stop criminals, only provides opportunities for them, I don’t know what will.