When gun control failed to work, as we all told the anti-gunners it would, gun control states decided that ammo control was the next frontier. Never mind that if gun control worked, ammo control would be unnecessary. Oh no, let's not focus on that.
Instead, let's focus on just how poorly New Jersey's ammo control is doing.
See, when you make it difficult or impossible for people to buy ammunition lawfully, they'll look for other avenues to obtain it. This includes people who had been law-abiding citizens, but don't want to have to keep jumping through state-mandated hoops just to get the ammo they need to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
Especially since ammunition isn't serialized, so they won't have to justify where they got it.
But because there is a black market demand, there will be those who will seek to meet that demand, and some of them aren't just buying ammo to sell to others. Oh no, they're doing something very different.
A state Department of Corrections lieutenant is facing two dozen charges, accused of stealing state-owned ammunition and reselling it for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Timothy Morris, of Ocean County, was indicted by a grand jury on charges of pocketing more than $475,000 through a years-long scheme.
The 57-year-old Bayville resident was suspended from work last year, pending the case's outcome.Longtime NJDOC range master oversaw ammunition supply
From 2008 to last year, Morris served as Range Master for the department.His responsibilities included ordering and overseeing all ammunition at four corrections gun ranges in Annandale, Browns Mills, Maurice River and the Corrections Staff Training Academy in Sea Girt.
Morris had also been in charge of ammunition supply at Special Operations Group Headquarters in Trenton.
So he stole nearly half a million dollars' worth of ammo, which he then turned around and sold, pocketing the money. Now, Morris is facing 24 charges, including some related to false tax filings, likely to cover up his illicit activities.
Even Capone couldn't get away with that.
The truth is that Morris is a symptom of what happens when you continue to try to make things illegal. When the laws are simple and straightforward, there's less incentive for many to turn down the path of the criminal. They might be inclined to break the rules, because criminal psychology suggests this isn't something that just pops up, but they're not crossing that line into outright criminality.
But each hurdle created also creates incentives. It opens up the door to opportunity, and some people are going to take it who might not have otherwise.
And all the laws that were created to stop a given activity actually just encourage someone to step on the other side of the line, from lawful to unlawful.
Now, in and of itself, that's not the biggest thing in the world. Sometimes, making that step is actually the righteous action, but whether it is or not, the truth is that Morris allegedly stole ammunition from the state, sold it to people the state didn't want having ammo, pocketed the money, and eventually got caught.
At half a million bucks' worth, I'm guessing he got greedy and got caught that way, but it doesn't really matter in the end.
What matters is that, once again, gun control--and, by extension, ammo control--has failed to do what it was explicitly designed to do. This is a running theme in things, and it's insane that some people are just too dense to see it.
Then again, this is New Jersey we're talking about here. There are a lot of good people up that way, but there are also a lot of people who seem to think that guns are bad, our rights are evil, and we should never look upon a firearm again without recoiling in terror.
That doesn't change the fact that the crap they keep passing doesn't work, though. Nothing will change that little tidbit.
