We on the gun rights side of things don’t like gun control. That’s hardly surprising, though. People who support rights tend to oppose things that trample on those rights. It’s just the natural order of things.

Take measures like California’s controversial concealed carry law working its way through the courts right now.

Obviously, those who favor such laws want to sing its praises and talk about why it’s absolutely essential to restrict the lawful carry of firearms in so many places as to render the right to bear arms essentially meaningless.

Apparently, some folks read Bruen’s warning not to make entire cities “sensitive” locations and figured that so long as there were, like, four places you could carry, they were golden.

But the truth of the matter is that while criminals will ignore every gun prohibition you care to concoct, it’s good guys with guns that will ultimately pay the price.

And the Dailly Signal’s Amy Swearer has some great examples among a list of defensive gun uses.

In California, for example, Jan. 1 was the date to ring in the state’s plethora of new restrictions on carrying concealed firearms in public, courtesy of SB 2, a law passed in the wake of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen to punish concealed carry permit holders for having their rights vindicated by the Supreme Court.

This legislation spitefully limits the scope of lawful concealed carry to little more than empty public sidewalks, in effect telling ordinary Californians that while they can now obtain a concealed carry permit, those permits are functionally useless.

…

If gun control activists had their way, many of these ordinary Americans would be treated just as harshly as the criminals against whom they protected themselves and others.

This isn’t hyperbole.

Under California’s new carry laws, if the incident in the museum parking lot in Denver had happened in California, the armed father would have faced criminal charges for defending himself with a firearm in a “parking area under the control of a zoo or museum.” And the heroic concealed carry permit holder in Chicago might well have been dissuaded from carrying his firearm to and from his job at an airport—another place where, as of Jan. 1, California banned the possession of firearms, unless kept inaccessible in a locked box.

So, too, would the man who defended his sister in Soso, Mississippi, with an AR-15—he would be facing criminal charges in restrictive states like California and Illinois—not because his actions weren’t self-evidently justified as self-defense, but because he used a type of firearm that is irrationally (and ironically) condemned by gun control activists as “not useful for lawful civilian purposes.”

Now, there are a lot of defensive gun uses listed in this piece, but these two are prime examples for our overall point here. Both of these were legal where they happened, apparently, but they wouldn’t be legal in California under those state’s laws.

Which raises questions as to just how many incident have happened in California that wouldn’t have happened if they didn’t have such restrictive gun laws.

“But how many more would have happened to good, innocent people by criminals if they’d had access to these guns?” someone might ask.

The answer is that there wouldn’t be nearly as many as some might like to believe.

Criminals don’t follow gun control laws. They don’t follow any law that doesn’t provide a benefit to them in some way, shape, or form. As such, they’ll take whatever steps they need to take in order to get their hands on guns just like they do everywhere else.

The only people inhibited by these laws are those who are trying to be law-abiding.

Gun control only controls guns for those who are going to obtain them and use them lawfully. It does nothing to bad guys.

And, as we can see here, there are at least two incidents just in the month of December where California’s gun control laws may well have hurt the law abiding if these incidents had happened there.

Gun control isn’t the answer. It only hurt the people advocates claim it will protect.