Anti-gunners routinely argue that we can make our problems with guns essentially go away if we just pass the right laws. They claim they can respect the Second Amendment and keep criminals from getting firearms. Of course, nothing they propose respects the Second Amendment, but still...
The thing is, if we can't keep weapons out of prison, can we keep guns out of prohibited hands?
I ask because, well, there's always been a problem with contraband in prison, but we tend to think of prison weapons as makeshift shivs made by doing things like rubbing chicken bones or toothbrushes across the concrete floor to sharpen them.
But we live in a world of technology, and while most of it is great, the truth is that if it exists, someone will figure out a way to use it that was never intended...such as trying to smuggle contraband weapons into a prison.
The New York State Department of Corrections & Community Supervision said a drone was used to drop contraband into Marcy Correctional Facility.
Prison staff detected the drone around 1 a.m. on March 14. The drone released a package containing the contraband between two dormitory buildings inside the prison fence.
The package contained two 8-inch double-edged knives, around 530 grams of a "green leafy substance," five pieces of paper saturated in intoxicating chemicals, one cell phone, two hair clippers with charges and accessories and four bandanas.
The drone was captured outside the prison.
I’ll grant that last part there, because it was captured. The question is, was this the first trip it made? I doubt it.
The truth is that there will always be people who want to get contraband into prisons. That could be drugs, dirty magazines, cell phones, or weapons. If there’s a demand for a good, someone will seek to fill that demand. It doesn’t really matter all that much if it’s legal or not, and with the sentences some of these guys have, there’s not much of a disincentive to try and break the rules.
But the big takeaway here is that even if we implement massive gun control measures, the people who are meant to be kept from getting guns will just start to get creative. They’ll find a way to get firearms, and there’s literally nothing you can do to prevent them from getting them. Hell, I've heard some stories from the inside about how creative theses guys get that made me wonder why they couldn't use some of that creativity for good instead of ill. I've heard stories involving Kool-Aid and instant coffee that still baffles my mind, so I'm not shocked they'll find a way to get weapons inside.
You don’t have to like it. You just have to accept it.
We can’t keep things like weapons from getting into prisons. These are some of the most secure facilities we have outside of top-secret military and intelligence installations. There’s no way we can implement those security measures nationwide, nor even the prison level of security, so how do you think that any given law or set of laws will somehow magically make the bad people disarmed?
You might as well ask Santa and the Tooth Fairy to take their guns away while you’re at it, because those have a better likelihood of accomplishing something here.
Not that the people who most need to understand that are capable of understanding that.
