Everyone likes to tell us that if we adopt very strict gun control laws, no one who isn’t supposed to have firearms can get them. It’s so naive it’s almost adorable, or it would be if it wasn’t our rights they were idiotically talking about trampling on.

Instead, it’s very troubling because their nativity is likely to get someone killed.

Take Ireland, for instance. Not the Northern Ireland that’s part of the UK, mind you. I’m talking about the rest of the island that’s its own country, completely with extensive gun control laws.

And they did bupkis to prevent a recent incident.

The man who fired shots into the air in a Carlow town shopping centre before taking his own life, was described previously in court as having a “fascination” with firearms.

The description was made when he appeared before court on gun charges and was granted bail.

He had allegedly bought guns on the darknet, including a G3 Heckler & Kock machine gun, a Remington M1911 handgun and two types of ammunition, which were discovered during a Garda operation in Co Kildare.

In a statement on Monday afternoon, Assistant Commissioner Paula Hilman, for the Garda Eastern Region, said gardaí responded to the scene on Sunday evening to see a large number of people running from the shopping centre.

An unarmed uniformed unit observed the suspect exiting and discharging a shotgun into the air, she said.

“Another plainclothes armed Garda unit responding drew their official firearms and identified themselves as armed gardaí. The suspect discharged the firearm again, self-inflicting a fatal wound,” she said.

No member of An Garda Síochána discharged a weapon, she said.

…

Gardaí believed the man, who was in his early 20s, had purchased the guns for recreational reasons rather than any plan to carry out organised crimes. However, that investigation into him and other suspects was significant in scale and involved Garda units that tackle serious crime, including the National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau and Emergency Response Unit.

When the man appeared in court last year, gardaí initially objected to bail. He was eventually granted bail subject to strict conditions.

Now, this is someone who got guns via the dark web. Assuming the media got the nomenclature correct, he had something that most of us are never going to be able to own in that full-auto G3. The 1911 is attainable, of course, but not the G3 unless you’ve got the cash and happen upon a transferable one.

Oh, wait, you can’t because it wasn’t developed until the 1990s. The 1986 machine gun ban means we’re never getting one.

Yet some random Irish dude with no respect for the law managed to get one. Brilliant.

The police don’t think he had any nefarious intent, though. He just wanted guns and apparently had a lifelong fascination with firearms. I get that fascination. Many of us share it. We’re just fortunate enough to live in a country where we can get most things easily enough.

But because this guy had to go outside of the system, he was able to get things we would never find at our local gun store. This is what happened with more and more extreme gun control. When everything’s illegal, pretty much, then there’s no reason to limit your search to things like non-machine guns.

Then it just becomes a matter of money.

In the process, it shatters much of the narrative around gun control. 

At least, it would if the anti-gunners wouldn’t engage in mental contortions as to why it doesn’t actually matter.