Ace independent war correspondent Michael Yon posted this to his Facebook page. He’s currently reporting from Afghanistan. He comes with an important lesson in gun control:

Gun control is a hot topic in Afghan villages. Several years ago, President Karzai ordered weapons to be confiscated from villagers. Today we go into villages asking them to resist the Taliban. They say they have no weapons but the Taliban is armed.

You take guns away from law-abiding citizens and only the criminals, or in this case terrorists, are left with guns. Criminals who intend to commit murder or armed robbery, or again terrorism in this case, don’t care about your gun control laws. So your good intentions have left the innocent more vulnerable to the violent.

This is a lesson that should be taken to heart here in the United States. Do cities with strong gun control have less violence than areas where guns are ubiquitous throughout the population? Hardly. It’s common sense that armed law-abiding citizens are less vulnerable to criminals than law-abiding citizens blocked from carrying weapons.

Place yourself in the mindset of a criminal looking to hold up a store. Would you rather pull out a gun in a city where odds are several of the innocent people surrounding you can pull out their own guns? Or would you rather pull out a gun in a city where odds are none of the innocent people surrounding you have their own guns? Exactly.