One thing many anti-gunners want is for there to be an ID requirement for each and every gun sale in this country. The fact that many also oppose ID requirements for voting seems kind of hilarious to me, but it is what it is.

Most of us have had to show ID while buying a firearm at one point or another. Maybe not for face-to-face transfers, but any gun bought in a store required an ID. 

This, some would argue, makes those sales nice and secure.

Yeah, about that…

A man from Mexico was sentenced to a year in prison Tuesday after being caught with a gun and fraudulent identification documents following a road rage incident.

Donovan Mallen, 22, of Berkeley, Mo., will be deported after his release from prison. He was sentenced to a year and a day in prison after admitting in a guilty plea in August that he fired a shot in the air after being shot at by another vehicle in February 2021.

…

Mallen also had a fraudulent Permanent Resident Card and Social Security card. He pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in St. Louis to illegal entry and unlawful possession of a firearm by an illegal alien.

Now, we don’t know how Mallen got this firearm. He may have purchased it via the black market, but the presence of fraudulent identification is an important point to remember.

See, fake IDs are common enough. Teenagers get them to buy beer, for crying out loud, and while they’re not all created equal, many are created well enough to fool most folks who work in retail. Liquor store clerks see as many IDs as gun store personnel, if not more, and if it can get by them, it can get by most folks.

That means even if criminals were to stop stealing guns entirely–which is where most guns in criminal hands come from, based on data from the ATF–there would still be a way they could get guns even if they’re prohibited.

An ID card that says Person A is really Person B would allow Person A to get through all of the hurdles meant to stop him or her from getting a firearm, all because Person B is a law-abiding citizen.

The truth of the matter is that you’re never going to keep those determined to get a gun from getting one. It’s never going to happen. You’d do much better to focus on undermining the desire for one in such people.

New roadblocks to owning a firearm, if they impact criminals at all, are little more than a business opportunity for some enterprising soul who doesn’t really worry about things like “legality.” God knows we’ve seen ample evidence of that time and time again.

ID requirements may sound good, but the truth is that it just means the market for fake IDs gets a little bigger. Similar can be said about literally everything else means to thwart criminals in their efforts to arm themselves.

It’s a lost cause and a waste of time to keep beating heads against walls and calling it gun control.