Want tighter gun control? Beware of your allies.

If you're broadly in favour of more restrictions on private gun ownership, it's probably because you're a well-meaning person who thinks that tighter law means fewer guns, and fewer guns means fewer homicides. Most people who take the opposite view want to challenge those assumptions, but I have a different purpose here. I want to draw attention to the fact that a small subset of your most vocal gun-control allies are wolves in sheep's clothing: vile miscreants who want more restrictions because it aids their criminal activities.

Those who are prepared to conduct armed robbery, for example, probably don't care whether their gun is legal or not. Tighter gun control for the law-abiding means that armed robbers are less likely to meet armed resistance, and there's no target so soft as a "gun-free" zone. Expect gun-wielding criminals to support tighter gun laws with gusto. And to those dealing in illegal arms trafficking, tighter law means more things are illegal, which means more black market opportunities, which means more money.

In the extreme case, you get someone like Leland Yee. Formerly a respectable, high-ranking Democrat in the state of California, he was convicted to five years prison in Feb. 2016 for accepting bribes and trafficking in arms. Stricter gun control was, or course, part of his public policy platform.

The existence of someone like Yee doesn't invalidate your position any more than the existence of adulterous, money-grubbing televangelists invalidates Christianity, but it should give you pause. Yee may have been quite sincere in his advocacy of gun control: he may have been an opportunistic criminal rather than a hypocrite. One of the lessons of the Prohibition era is that organised crime often thrives when laws are tightened. Restrictive laws of the appropriate kind are a mafioso's best friend. Why wouldn't Yee be in favour of strict gun control?

In an ideal world, gun control laws would have exactly their intended effect, but in an ideal world we wouldn't need them in the first place. Some people want laws precisely because other people will obey them, giving the lawless an advantage. Let your desire for tighter gun laws be tempered with that knowledge.