New York City has had strict gun control regulations for a century now. During that time, crime has ebbed and flowed like the tide, but there’s been little appreciable impact from these laws.

The one group who has most benefitted from these regulations, however, have been those who weren’t going to follow them in the first place.

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown announced Monday that Ronald Drabman, 60, was arrested over the weekend and charged with a staggering 110 weapons violations, mostly for criminal possession. Following a search warrant of his home’s basement, authorities seized 45 long arms, 23 pistols, a zip gun, a couple of airguns and 50,000 rounds of ammunition. “The defendant is accused of using his home as a warehouse for illegal firearms – along with tens of thousands of rounds of live ammunition,” Brown said. “This stockpile of weapons poses a great risk to the residents of Queens. It is extremely disturbing to find such an arsenal of firearms in a residential community.” … The firearms shown off at the conference included a number of collectible arms or at least guns rarely seen in Queens. Among these are an AR with what looks like a Colt Light Machine Gun front end, a Mossberg bullpup shotgun, and a Franchi SPAS-12. One of the rifles seems to be a fairly rare Italian BM59 in a Nigerian pistol grip stock while a Mauser 1934 Pocket Model, Walther P-38, and a Browning Hi-Power rest on table display of pistols.

The bust was one of the largest in NYPD history from a single individual. Also found was what the NYPD Chief of Intelligence described as “unprecedented amount of ammunition.”

You know, a lot of times, police departments talk about finding an “arsenal” when really it’s only a few guns; maybe a couple of rifles, a shotgun, and a couple of handguns. Often times, it’s less than what many gun owners have. But this time, the term is appropriate.

Wow.

If this was a private collection, it would be a fairly impressive one if it were in a free state where you can do this sort of thing. In New York City, it’s simply mind-boggling.

At least a couple of the firearms are weapons that have semi-auto equivalents, such as a Thompson that sat on the display table. Whether it was an older, full-auto version such as the military had or not remains to be seen. As he’s now facing 25 years in prison, I don’t see why he wouldn’t get a full-auto version, but still…

If there are full auto weapons on that table, then it wouldn’t matter where he was. He’d have broken the law, unless he’d taken all the legal steps to purchase his firearms. Somehow, I don’t think he was particularly inclined to do so.

However, there’s a lesson in here for New York City, only they won’t bother to learn it. If 60-year-old Ronald Drabman could get his hands on this much firepower, then what on Earth makes them think they can keep guns out of the hands of the ordinary street criminal? All these gun control laws do is keep regular, law-abiding people from getting guns to defend themselves with. Meanwhile, those who don’t care about the law can amass an actual arsenal.

My money is on no one in the Big Apple being interested in learning that lesson.