I'm the father of a 12-year-old girl, and I know she's growing up. I don't have to like it, I just have to deal with it.

But despite that fact, she's still a little girl. She still has child-like interests and while she's also trying to find her "thing" in the world, I can't imagine her delving into the adult world just yet.

And an arrested down in Florida has made me try to do just that.

You see, a 14-year-old boy was arrested with an AR pistol and marijuana in his backpack at a mall in Naples, Florida.

Naples Police say a 14-year-old brought a rifle into Coastland Center Mall.

They say another shopper saw what he thought was the imprint of a gun in the teenager's backpack, outside of the Old Navy store on Sunday afternoon.

Police say an off duty sergeant working as a security guard found the boy and asked to see what was in his backpack. They say the boy told him no, because he had marijuana in it.

...

Police say inside Sweeney's backpack they found a Palmetto State Armory AR style rifle with a fully loaded magazine and less than 20 grams of marijuana.

The one correction I'm going to make here is that they have a photograph of the weapon. It has a short barrel and no stock. It's an AR pistol, not a rifle.

Of course, at age 14, the kid couldn't have obtained either lawfully, especially since Florida is a 21-to-buy state for any firearm.

For the record, 20 grams seems to be a lot of marijuana and Florida only allows it for medical use, not recreational consumption. Even if they did, I'm pretty sure a 14-year-old wouldn't be able to lawfully get it.

It's almost like gun and drug laws don't actually stop people from getting guns and drugs.

That can't be true, though, because I'm regularly told that gun control works. 

My thing is that if we can't keep a 14-year-old from walking around with an AR pistol in his backpack, is there really any hope of stopping a grown adult from carrying a firearm anywhere they want to go?

I'm not holding out a whole lot of hope on that one, which is why I'm always going to oppose gun control laws. No, a 14-year-old is way too young to be trusted with an AR pistol in the backpack--I know my daughter, just two years younger, sure as hell is and I don't see her maturing that much in such a short period of time despite girls maturing faster than boys--but it does illustrate how useless the age limits are.

And I'm not getting into the stupidity of calling an AR pistol a rifle. I'm not sure if that was a law enforcement screw-up or a media screw-up. Either way, someone didn't know what they were talking about.

Especially as the kid wasn't charged with illegal possession of an NFA weapon.

Regardless, this is what it is: A blatant example of how gun control cannot work, particularly so long as there's already an illegal trade in drugs that can also potentially be used to move firearms illegally as well.