When guns are illegal, gun trafficking becomes a thing.

Criminals have money and want certain goods, like firearms, that they’re not allowed to lawfully have. Because of this, some other criminals will figure out a way to meet that demand. We’ve seen this play out too many times with too many different things to think otherwise.

Take New York City, for example. They have a long history of making guns difficult to own lawfully. Between the city and the state, they’re about as much of a non-permissive environment as is possible in this day and age.

And yet, gun trafficking does plenty to provide their bad guys with firearms as a recent bust illustrates.

Three men have been indicted for illegally trafficking more than a hundred guns into New York City from the Midwest, the Queens District Attorney’s office announced Monday.

Prosecutors say Ahmed “Taju” Mutalib, 32, of Decatur, Georgia, collaborated with 27-year-old Abdul Haruna of the Bronx and 30-year-old Murtala Haruna of Cincinnati, Ohio, to smuggle and sell the weapons.

The three men are cousins, and all face up to 25 years in prison if convicted on the 575-count indictment, including charges of criminal sale of firearms, criminal weapons possession, conspiracy and money laundering, according to Queens DA Melinda Katz.

“They are in custody, and the guns are here instead of on the street,” Katz said at a press briefing Monday.

A seven-month “high-stakes, high-risk” investigation into the alleged gun trafficking ring started with an anonymous tip, said Katz, and unfolded with the help of an undercover officer who arranged to buy a total of 96 guns from the men in a series of meetups over the summer.

Many of the deals took place in the parking lot of a P.C. Richard & Son store on Steinway Street in Astoria, Katz said, while further evidence was gathered through a wiretap on the defendants’ phones. A police officer proficient in languages from Ghana was able to translate their conversations from Hausa, Ga and Twi, according to prosecutors.

Now, the official line from the gun control side will likely be something about how if everyone had New York style gun control laws, gun trafficking wouldn’t be an issue.

After all, they argue, how can the traffic guns if they can’t get guns in the first place?

That thinking is kind of undermined by the opioid crisis we’re experiencing here and now, though, as well as the whole history of the War on Drugs. After all, you can’t get heroin or crack anywhere legally, yet entire empires have been built on just those drugs.

You’re deluding yourself if you think guns would be any different.

As for this arrest, let’s be real here. These were a lot of guns for a gun trafficking arrest. If one undercover cop bought that many guns, we kind of have to wonder just how many other firearms they sold. It’s unlikely the cop was their only customer, after all, so just how many guns did they bring into the Big Apple?

And the better question is how are the laws keeping good, decent folks from buying or carrying guns keeping anyone safer when gun trafficking will always make sure the wrong sort have firearms in the first place?