The state of California is kind of picky about what guns the regular, average, law-abiding citizen is allowed to have. They have lists of approved guns and everything. They simply don’t want to let the everyday Joe or Sally have whatever guns they think are best for their own defense. Nope. You simply can’t have that.

Over and over again, though, we’ve seen how California’s gun control is an abject failure. We’ve seen plenty of examples of it.

Yet even under the best of circumstances, gun control isn’t going to work if the people who are supposed to enforce it are selling illegal firearms.

Federal agents Friday arrested a former San Diego sheriff’s captain accused of running a gun trafficking business and charged a deputy who had access to weapons restricted for law enforcement. The arrest of former Capt. Marco Garmo, 52, at his home in the early morning was latest in a string of cases involving current and former law enforcement officers in Southern California accused of such illegal firearm sales. Three others were also arrested and charged, including a prominent San Diego jeweler, who is accused of buying the weapons knowing they were illegally obtained. Prosecutors say Garmo acquired 146 weapons and sold or transferred 104 of them. He was helped by Lt. Fred Magana, who purchased many of the “off roster” firearms, which aren’t available to the general public but can be legally sold to law enforcement officers, according to court documents. Magana pleaded guilty Friday in federal court in San Diego to charges of aiding Garmo’s business by making straw purchases of firearms. … He had been on paid administrative leave since February after agents with the federal Bureau of Investigation and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives executed search warrants at several places in San Diego County, including his home and a sheriff’s substation he supervised.

Garmo and Magana are among the very people who don’t just enforce gun control laws in the state of California but are also the people who are to be trusted with people’s personal safety in the gun control state. Meanwhile, they’re allegedly selling illegal guns to pretty much whoever.

That’s a problem.

The obvious problem is that you have a cop breaking the law. That’s never a good thing.

However, the other side of the coin is that the only way a cop can do something like this is in an anti-gun environment. He can only acquire off-limits firearms if there are off-limits firearms to obtain, particularly when he can have them as a police officer but regular citizens can’t. That forbidden nature will simply drive some people to get the guns all on its own.

The fewer weapons forbidden to the public, the less chance of something like this has of happening.

Of course, this is also what happens when you make one group of people second-class citizens. Police officers need firearms in their line of work, absolutely. Yet why should they be able to purchase certain guns for their own personal use that the regular folks can’t? Allowing that turns regular gun owners into second-class citizens.

If an officer needs a particular weapon for work, their department can buy it and issue it to them.

Now, I’m sure quite a few California officers won’t like that. They don’t want to be restricted from buying certain weapons. I get that.

I guess they now see what the rest of the state feels like. Maybe it’s time for them to step up and demand people’s gun rights be restored and for the state to knock off this stupid pace they’ve been on. How does that sound?

Either way, though, it should prevent the next Garmo.