Over in Europe, they don’t have as much of a civilian market for firearms. As such, there aren’t that many guns stolen and ending up in criminal hands.

As such, they do things like modifying replicas or starter pistols.

Here, our bad guys generally don’t have to do any such thing. There are generally enough guns available on the black market to meet the demand.

Yet that doesn’t mean no one here will do such a thing. In fact, a man in Massachusetts decided to skirt the state’s gun control laws and modify a starter pistol.

A Natick man is being held without bail after police say they found dozens of boxes of ammunition, gun accessories and a starter pistol that could fire real bullets inside his apartment.

Police arrested Richard Farrell Kane, 32, at 1:26 p.m. Wednesday at his 13 Village Way apartment after about a two-week investigation, Deputy Police Chief Brian Lauzon said Thursday.

…

Inside the apartment, in several locations, police say they found more than two dozen boxes of various ammunition, including shotgun shells, .22 caliber, 9-millimeter, .40 caliber and .38 caliber.

They also said they found a starter pistol that had been converted to be able to shoot .22 caliber bullets, Lauzon said. They found parts of a Glock handgun, two different types of bullet proof vests, a stun baton and many clips, several of which were illegal, Lauzon said.

It’s interesting that they found so many calibers, but only the converted starter pistol to fire any of them. For me, that raises a number of questions.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There doesn’t seem to be anything the man in question is accused of doing that should be illegal. He didn’t have a state-issued ID to own that gun, for example. It doesn’t appear he was a felon or anything, he just didn’t play well with Massachusetts state law.

Yet the overall point is that he bypassed those very same laws. We’re told such laws stop people from having guns when they shouldn’t have them, yet here he is with a converted starter pistol despite those laws.

“But ghost guns…” some like to cry, but even if you take those completely out of the equation, is anyone really surprised that someone went a different route to circumvent the law?

Interestingly, going back to how this all should be legal, if the gentleman in question isn’t a felon or anything of the sort, he might well be approached as a plaintiff in a challenge against permit-to-purchase laws. Following Bruen, I’m pretty sure those aren’t going to survive a challenge and I seriously doubt a court will say this guy lacks standing to challenge them.

That would make for an interesting case, particularly if it reaches the Supreme Court in its current makeup.

To say that some anti-gun illusions would be shattered at that point would be putting it mildly.

In the meantime, let’s remember that people who want guns will get guns no matter what laws you put in place. They do it in Europe and every other continent–yes, probably even Antarctica–and they’ll keep on doing it here.