Every so often, we run a story showing how gun laws here in the US do a pretty terrible job of keeping guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. I wrote one earlier today, as a matter of fact. These are useful for illustrating just how poorly these laws work.

Yet many gun control enthusiasts love to argue that the laws work great in other places, that they keep guns out of the hands of bad guys.

Well, that’s not really true.

First, we know that the reason their violent crime rate is lower than ours isn’t because of guns. After all, our non-gun homicide rate his higher than their total homicide rates. We’re just a more violent country.

However, Ireland has a reputation for violence, at least historically, that leaves ours in the dust. I mean, over there, the letters I-R-A don’t mean a retirement plan.

Well, OK, they kinda do, but not remotely in the same way they do here.

But things have settled down over there and the nation has a lot of gun laws on the books. How well do those work?

Well, about like you’d expect.

A teenage drug driver was found with three guns and a ‘large quantity of ammunition’ after being stopped at a checkpoint in Co Kerry.

Gardaí were conducting a routine checkpoint in Tralee when they made the shocking discovery. The vehicle, with two teenagers inside, was stopped at 10:30 pm last night and the driver failed a roadside drug test.

Gardaí discovered a shotgun, two scoped rifles and a large quantity of bullets and shotgun cartridges inside the vehicle.

Now, these are the kinds of guns that are generally legal in Ireland as a general rule, though is seems pretty clear that these teens weren’t in possession of these weapons lawfully–a permit can be issued to people as young as 16, apparently, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility they owned them outright.

But they failed a roadside drug test, which is pretty much what it says. They have the means to check for drugs right there at the roadside, and these teens failed it.

It doesn’t say what they were on, but they were using something and in possession of guns which, apparently, is against Irish law.

And yet, that law stopped nothing at all.

Sure, it gave the cops a reason to make an arrest, but so what? How much mischief could have been committed, hypothetically speaking, if they’d just taken a different road? The laws aren’t there to justify arresting people, at least as they’ve been billed to us. No, they’re meant to prevent certain actions first and foremost, and yet, that doesn’t seem to work.

It’s not just here in the United States that gun control laws don’t work. That’s truly international.

Criminals, regardless of where they’re from, don’t follow the law. They’ll have guns they’re not supposed to have. They’ll do things they’re not supposed to do. They’ll keep doing it.

What the laws do, though, is prevent people like you or me from having the means to deal with it if and when those criminals decide they want what we have, up to and including our lives.