It’s baffling to me that some people still think that gun control actually stops criminals from getting guns.

We know definitively that criminals aren’t walking into gun stores to get firearms. They’re not buying them via face-to-face transfers in states where those are legal, either. Sure, occasionally that happens, but not in any appreciable numbers, especially when compared to how many guns are in criminal hands throughout the nation.

Yet they keep pushing this idea that somehow, with enough laws, criminals will stop getting guns.

Of course, maybe they have a point. I mean, drugs are the only thing potentially more tightly controlled than guns and we don’t have an issue with people getting those when they shouldn’t have them, right?

Especially in super-strict New York City.

Oh, wait a minute…they do have an issue, as illustrated in a court case.

Brooklyn resident Ariana Charles, 28, pled guilty to trafficking firearms as well as conspiring to traffic fentanyl and cocaine base, which most folks just call crack.

Court documents claim that Charles sold 18 guns to an undercover officer in various parts of Brooklyn; this despite the fact that New York has very strict gun control laws on the books, none of which seemed to faze Charles in the least.

The officer claimed he was a drug dealer who needed guns for illegal resale, which Charles was apparently happy to provide.

Again, all in violation of the gun control laws.

The article linked above trips over itself to credit the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act for the arrest, but gun trafficking was illegal well before the law was enacted. In fact, there were tons of laws against what she was just convicted of doing on the books and absolutely none of them stopped her, just like none of the laws against trafficking crack and fentanyl stopped her.

That’s because those who trade in illegal goods will trade in illegal goods. They’ll get what they want and they’ll sell it to those who have the money.

While guns can be obtained lawfully in various places, including in New York, the drugs can’t. There is no right to keep and bear controlled substances in the Constitution. They’re illegal, especially the particularly hard ones like crack. Fentanyl, at least, has medical value, though it’s more tightly controlled than an NFA item at a Brady convention.

If people can keep getting that, then just how are you going to stop guns that are constitutionally protected?

The short answer is that you’re not.

All the laws against drugs haven’t stopped drugs from being an issue. We thought we were through the woods, then fentanyl started killing tens of thousands of Americans every year–far more than succumb to gunshots, it should be noted, even if you include suicides–and we’ve taken every legislative step humanly possible to prevent this.

How many times must we point to this failure and note that if you can’t stop the drugs from killing people, or the people like Charles who traffic in it, then why would anyone believe we can keep guns out of their hands?

The disconnect is so profound that it’s baffling.