Maryland favors gun control. We’ve seen that pretty extensively over the years. While they’re not quite New Jersey or California, they’re not going to be mistaken for a pro-gun state anytime soon.

Gun laws like what they have there are, we’re told, intended to keep guns out of the hands of people who aren’t supposed to have them.

What’s more, ask any gun control advocate. They’ll tell you that gun control works. They’ll regurgitate talking points made by their favorite talking heads that will “prove” it works.

Of course, if those gun laws work so well, how did this happen?

The discovery of an illegal firearm during a recent robbery investigation led Howard County Police detectives to charge two teens with murder in a triple shooting in Columbia, according to Chief Gregory Der.

Der shared updates in several police investigations Tuesday afternoon during a news conference.

The arrests of the two Baltimore teens, an 18-year-old and a 17-year-old, in the Columbia killing came after police found a gun they believe was used in that shooting during a search in a separate investigation into a July robbery. Three teenagers and a 46-year-old Columbia man were arrested in the unrelated robbery and firearms investigation, Der said.

On Oct. 19, Howard police detectives served search warrants at multiple locations in Columbia in the July robbery case and found numerous illegal weapons, Der said. Police seized several guns, including privately made firearms, or PMFs, also known as “ghost guns,” in various stages of assembly, according to a police news release. Detectives determined that one of the firearms had been used in an Oct. 16 triple shooting in the 6000 block of Foreland Garth that resulted in the death of Dylan Migel Perez, 24, of Baltimore, and serious injuries to two other men, police said.

Now, “ghost guns” or not, it’s pretty clear gun laws failed here.

First, Maryland has a ghost gun ban on the books. That particular law is meant to prevent people from making them in the state. Clearly, that didn’t work worth a damn.

Next, 17- an 18-year-olds can’t lawfully own handguns. Again, we see how that reportedly worked.

Then again, if things like laws were going to actually work to prevent violent crime, the laws against actual violent crime would do the trick just by themselves. However, a 24-year-old murder victim suggests that maybe laws don’t do anything to prevent the non-law-abiding from not abiding by the law.

Crazy idea, I know, but here we are.

In all seriousness, though, I see it as a damn shame that so many younger people like this get caught up in this kind of mess, screw up their entire lives by killing someone before they’re old enough to buy their first legal beer.

They can’t come back from something like this. There’s no do-over, no reset. This will hang over them for life, even when they get out of prison, that they’ll never really get back to where they could have been.

It doesn’t have to be this way, but since we’re forced to talk about the controlling the tools and not the tools using them, we’re not likely to see much change.