Let's be real here, both sides of the gun debate believe their proposals work. While some on the gun control side are probably more driven by power and control than anything else, most of your rank-and-file gun control advocates really do just think it's the way to deal with crime. They've been lied to, manipulated, and sold a bill of goods about it, but they genuinely believe gun control works.

And it doesn't help that we have a lot of terribly flawed academic studies saying it does, all pushed by a media that lacks any ability to critique these studies in the least. It's easy for them to get sold that bill of goods.

Many of those same people like to point to New Zealand as an example of who we should be. After the Christchurch massacre, the nation enacted a plethora of new gun control regulations, which many American advocates think we should have done, too.

But people like you and me maintain those laws aren't going to do anything. The other side disagrees, but that's to be expected. 

Many of them also want bans on homemade firearms because of the media reports of the "growing" threat they represent.

Yet I'd love to point out something to them. Namely, the example of this guy:

A man who has already spent three-and-a-half months in jail and over 1200 days on electronically monitored bail awaiting trial on charges involving the manufacturing of 3D-printed guns will have to spend a little more time on restricted conditions because he can’t get along with others.

Northland resident Grant McLean, who also goes by the moniker G-Man Mann, appeared in Manukau District Court via audio-video feed recently for sentencing after pleading guilty to manufacturing prohibited items, breach of a protection order, and unlawful possession of bullets and a gun magazine.

“This case had an extremely protracted history,” Judge Janey Forrest said, explaining that previous trial dates had been adjourned several times before Mann opted to enter guilty pleas in August.

Because of the delays, the punitive aspects of sentencing “have largely been met” already, the judge said.

“I’m a little concerned that the rehabilitative aspects of sentencing have not been met,” she said, explaining that McLean, 52, has had what has been described by authorities as “a fairly difficult relationship with Corrections staff”.

Court documents state police found the 3D printer and enough parts for two semi-automatic guns inside the garage of his former Papakura, South Auckland home in March 2021.

He had sold the home several months earlier but had initially arranged to keep his belongings in the garage. In January 2021, the new owner asked him to remove his belongings and stop having mail sent to the house but he did not respond. One month later, the new tenants contacted police when a package arrived for McLean that they considered to be suspicious because the packing slip indicated it contained firearms parts.

With the new tenants’ blessing, police conducted a warrantless search.

Inside the garage, they found a partially assembled FGC-9 gun and enough scattered parts to assemble another. McLean’s community service card was found among the parts.

“An FGC-9 is a 3D printed firearm designed to get around various laws around gun control,” according to the agreed summary of facts for the case. “The plans for it, for 3D printing, can be downloaded online. ‘FGC’ stands for ‘F*** Gun Control’.”

So this is a guy who was essentially being punished for making guns illegally, and he continued to make guns illegally.

Sure, part of that is a lax system of punishing people who break the laws, but let's also understand that if laws were sufficient to keep people from doing illegal things, this could not and would not have happened.

But it did.

See, what gun control advocates need to understand is that while gun laws might be obstacles for criminals, they're never going to be insurmountable ones. Criminals break laws as a matter of course. Someone will find a way to break it, to get their hands on things they're not supposed to, and make money providing them to everyone else.

It's what happened with this guy in New Zealand and it's what happens in every other country in the world.

It's most definitely what happens here.

This is a guy who was as close to being controlled as anyone outside of prison itself could be, and yet he was building guns illegally. Do you really think you can create laws sufficient to actually prevent that here? How can so many people dispute the idea of American Exceptionalism while still believing we're exceptional enough that laws that don't stop people anywhere else in the world will stop them here?

It's baffling.