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Since Monday’s mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado, gun control advocates have repeatedly noted that a state judge blocked enforcement of the city’s “assault weapon” ban 10 days before the attack. The implausible implication is that the ordinance, had it been allowed to take effect, might have prevented this crime.

“Boulder’s assault weapons ban, meant to stop mass shootings, was blocked 10 days before [the] grocery store attack,” The Washington Post noted on Tuesday. “Boulder’s Pain Is Deepened by a Lost Fight for Gun Control,” says the headline over a New York Times story published yesterday. “Less than two weeks” after Boulder County District Court Judge Andrew Hartman concluded that the local “assault weapon” ban conflicted with state law, Times reporters Mike Baker and Lucy Tompkins note, “a man armed with an assault-style weapon walked into a Boulder supermarket and opened fire, killing 10 people.”

The connection between those two events may seem superficially plausible. After all, at least one of the weapons that the gunman apparently used, a Ruger AR-556 pistol, would have been covered by Boulder’s ordinance.

Among other things, that ordinance prohibits the sale of “all semiautomatic center-fire pistols” that “have the capacity to accept a magazine other than in the pistol grip” or “have a protruding grip or other device to allow the weapon to be stabilized with the non-trigger hand.” The AR-556 pistol, which resembles a short-barreled rifle but does not legally qualify as one, has a stabilizing brace and a magazine port that is separate from the grip.

If the local “assault weapon” ban had been in effect, the perpetrator of this week’s attack would not have been legally allowed to buy that gun in Boulder. But he lived in Arvada, a city about half an hour’s drive from Boulder. The arrest warrant affidavit says the suspect purchased the pistol on March 16. It does not say where he bought it. Still, even if Boulder’s ordinance had not been blocked, he could have bought the gun pretty much anywhere else in Colorado.

The ordinance also prohibits possession of “assault weapons” in Boulder, except for previously owned firearms registered with the city’s police department. But it defies logic to suggest that a man bent on mass murder would have worried about that rule, even assuming that he knew about it.

Even if this man was for some reason keen to follow local firearm regulations as he set out to kill a bunch of strangers, he could have accomplished the same horrifying end with a gun that did not fit the ban’s criteria. Would it really have mattered that his pistol lacked a stabilizing brace or that its magazine was attached to the grip?

“AR-style weapons, first developed for battlefield use, have for years been a growing target of gun control advocates as such firearms repeatedly are deployed during mass shootings,” the Times says. But the perpetrators of such crimes are actually more likely to use ordinary handguns or long guns that don’t qualify as “assault weapons,” which have figured in several of the deadliest mass shootings.

As usual, the Times does not delve into the question of whether the arbitrary distinctions drawn by “assault weapon” bans make any sense. But Baker and Tompkins do concede that “the gunman could have purchased his weapon in another town” even if Boulder’s ban had taken effect. “A person wishing to buy an assault rifle would only need to leave city limits to legally purchase one,” they note.

Still, Baker and Tompkins say, “there has been a particularly keen sense of dismay and frustration in a city that tried, and failed, to prevent one of the most horrific kinds of gun violence.” They illustrate those emotions with a quote from Jill Adler Grano, the former city council member who introduced Boulder’s “assault weapon” ban. “My heart is broken,” she says. “We tried so hard to prevent this from happening, yet here we are.”

Again, the implication is that the ordinance could have “prevent[ed] this from happening,” even though that is plainly not true. In their 27th paragraph, Baker and Tompkins come close to acknowledging reality. “In some ways,” they say, “local ordinances such as the one Boulder passed are statements of political conviction as much as they are effective prohibitions on guns.” But that formulation still implies that such ordinances are in some unspecified ways effective at accomplishing the avowed goals of the politicians who support them.

The Times laments “the limitations of a patchwork, city-by-city approach to gun policy.” It notes that gun rights advocates also object to that approach, “arguing that local ordinances like Boulder’s are a nightmare for gun owners who must navigate varying restrictions from city to city.” That is why Colorado, like many states, has a law that preempts such local restrictions—the same law that Judge Hartman cited when he blocked Boulder’s ban.

“I can’t tell you how angering that is,” Rachel Friend, a current city council member and local gun control activist, tells the Times. “I’m supporting and advocating for us to appeal.”

Toward what end? “Our country has gone through mass shooting after mass shooting for decades now,” Grano says. “I have a son in high school, and it just felt like, ‘We have got to do something. If the federal government is not going to take action, we’re just going to keep talking around in circles.'”

In other words: We have got to do something, whether or not it’s likely to have any impact on mass shootings or on gun violence generally. That is the logic endorsed by national politicians such as President Joe Biden and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D–Calif.) as well as local politicians like Grano and Friend. More should be required to pass any sort of legislation, let alone laws that impinge on a right guaranteed by the Constitution.

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Fourth Amendment advocates won big today at the U.S. Supreme Court, which held 5–3 that when the police shoot a fleeing suspect, it still counts as a Fourth Amendment seizure even if the bullets don’t stop the suspect. “The application of physical force to the body with the intent to restrain is a seizure,” declared Chief Justice John Roberts, “even if the person does not submit and is not subdued.”

The case of Torres v. Madrid began in the early morning hours of July 15, 2014, with Roxanne Torres sitting inside her car in her apartment building’s parking lot while several New Mexico State Police officers were parked nearby in an unmarked car. The officers, who were wearing dark tactical vests with police markings, were there to arrest somebody else. They claimed they only approached Torres because they thought she was acting suspiciously. According to Torres, she just saw individuals with guns crowding her car. Thinking she was about to be carjacked, Torres hit the gas. The officers shot her twice as she fled. Torres only learned that it was the police who shot her when she was arrested a day later at the hospital.

Torres sued, arguing that the officers’ use of excessive force violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable seizure. The officers countered by claiming that no seizure occurred since Torres was not actually stopped during the encounter.

“The question in this case,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts, who was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Brett Kavanaugh, “is whether a seizure occurs when an officer shoots someone who temporarily eludes capture after the shooting. The answer is yes: The application of physical force to the body of a person with intent to restrain is a seizure, even if the force does not succeed in subduing the person.”

Notably, Justice Neil Gorsuch, who Fourth Amendment advocates often see as an ally, dissented in favor of the officers. In Gorsuch’s view, which was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito (Justice Amy Coney Barrett took no part in the case), “‘seizing’ something doesn’t mean touching it; it means taking possession.”

The chief justice rejected that view, pointing to a 1991 decision written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. In California v. Hodari D., Scalia said that “the mere grasping or application of physical force with lawful authority, whether or not it succeeded in subduing the arrestee,” qualified as a seizure for Fourth Amendment purposes.

“At the end of the day,” Roberts wrote in Torres v. Madrid, “we simply agree with the analysis of the common law of arrest and its relation to the Fourth Amendment set forth thirty years ago by Justice Scalia, joined by six of his colleagues, rather than the competing view urged by the dissent today.”

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Sen. Alex Padilla (D–Calif.) recently claimed that it is easier in some states to acquire a rifle than it is to cast a ballot. This false claim ignores the reality of gun control in America. Despite widespread misconceptions held by gun control advocates, guns are the most heavily regulated consumer good in the country. Millions of Americans are federally prohibited from not only possessing a gun for even a fleeting moment, but also from possessing even a single bullet. 

Everyone who purchases a gun from a gun dealer must undergo a background check. The background check system is fairly robust (even though false positives can be a problem), and it screens for a variety of conditions and offenses that would disqualify someone from legally possessing a gun. Ineligible individuals include, among others, felons, those who have been dishonorably discharged from the military, anyone who has been involuntarily committed or adjudicated as a “mental defective,” undocumented immigrants, and anyone who has been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. If a prohibited person acquires a gun through a private sale without a background check, he is committing a felony. If the seller knew or had “reasonable cause” to know that the recipient was a prohibited buyer, then he is committing a felony too. Violators can serve up to 10 years in prison.

While prohibiting some people from possessing a gun might make sense, millions more Americans are stripped of their Second Amendment rights if they are “unlawful users” of or addicted to any controlled substance. It’s no defense if you live in a state where marijuana has been legalized. And if you lie on the form and say you don’t use illicit drugs, that’s a five-year felony.

This is not all just theoretical, as Ethan Kollie found out. Kollie helped the 2019 Dayton nightclub shooter build his gun (but not to commit the shooting, of which Kollie had no inkling). When the feds came to Kollie, he admitted to using marijuana and to lying on the background check form. He will serve 32 months for lying on the form and being illegally in possession of firearms.

In general, however, you need not worry if you use marijuana and own guns—if you’re white and live in an affluent neighborhood, that is. Those charged with prohibited possession of a firearm are usually already under investigation or having trouble with the law in other ways. Federal prosecutors often charge every offense they can, as it gives them more leverage in plea deals and helps pad their conviction rate. In 2007, for example, federal prosecutors charged John Mooney with possession of a firearm by a felon after he took a gun from his ex-wife, who had held the weapon to his head. Mooney then walked seven blocks to the bar he worked at to give it to the police. For those seven blocks he was in possession of the firearm and technically violating the law. And in November, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit upheld a sentence of 30 months for a felon who was convicted of possessing a single bullet.

These are just the federal restrictions. Many states have onerous requirements of their own, such as the 10 states that require a permit to purchase a firearm. In Washington, D.C., the requirements for legally owning a gun are sufficiently cumbersome that many have simply given up. While the pandemic came with gun-buying fervor across the country, in D.C., the only federal firearm licensee who could legally authorize the transfer or acquisition of guns abruptly stopped business. Gun rights, unlike voting rights, can be precarious enough that a change in profession can affect the right to self-defense for thousands of people.

True, not all firearms sales are run through the background check system. Private sales between individuals who are not in the business of selling guns are not subject to background checks. Fixing that “loophole” is the goal of so-called universal background check bills. Note, however, that anyone who is prohibited from possessing a weapon who acquires one through a private sale is already committing a significant felony, as is the seller if he knows the buyer is prohibited.

Obviously, registering to vote and casting a ballot are not subject to the same restrictions as purchasing a gun. In many states, felons are commonly restricted from voting during the period of incarceration, and in 11 states felons lose their voting rights indefinitely. But every felon in every state is federally prohibited from possessing a firearm or ammunition, and states are powerless to relax those restrictions. That’s true for someone who received a suspended sentence for tax fraud 30 years ago as well as for a murderer who served his time. (In rare instances, courts have restored Second Amendment rights to some felons—those with the resources to take their cases to court, at least. The blanket prohibition is the default rule.)

While some states may have overly bureaucratic systems for voter registration, that’s nothing compared to gun restrictions. Twenty-one states allow same day voter registration, and every state allows some sort of mail-in voting with just five states requiring a justification for voting by mail. Yes, lines may be long at some polling places, but the same is true of gun stores, especially last year.

Gun control advocates often embrace the narrative that guns are freely available in stores to anyone who wants one. Maybe they’ve never tried to buy a gun, and perhaps they don’t know any gun owners. In this and so many other ways, the gun debate is actually a culture debate. Guns are similar to voting in that people imbue them with deep significance and get fiercely riled up about restrictions. Within political tribes, your stance on gun rights or voting rights is a signaling device—but it’s still important to get your facts straight.

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In time-lapse videos from 2016 that are making the rounds again, Dutch crews can be seen building an entire highway overpass over a single weekend. That has stirred discussion of a longstanding question: Why is construction of public infrastructure slow and expensive in the United States compared with other advanced countries? New York City subways offer one famous example: The Second Avenue line now being partially constructed nearly 100 years after being proposed costs six times as much as a comparable project in Paris.

In a 2019 paper, Leah Brooks of George Washington University and Zachary D. Liscow of Yale University sought to explain a striking fact: “Real spending per mile on Interstate construction increased more than three-fold from the 1960s to the 1980s.”  

Two explanations frequently offered for this rise are plausible on the surface, but turn out to lack explanatory power. The first is that states built the easier sections of the interstate highway system first, and left for later the more difficult and expensive portions. It seems, however, the later-finished sections do not score worse on a scale of objective difficulty, such as population density, steepness, and the need to cross water barriers. There is also evidence that states’ actual practice was in fact to build more difficult sections first because that is where the existing traffic bottlenecks were.

A second possible, but insufficient, explanation is that cost per mile began escalating steeply because of rises in the cost of major inputs, such as labor and materials. Again, this is plausible on its face, but Brooks and Liscow write that it is not supported by actual spending figures. The real, after-inflation cost of labor didn’t change much during the period in which spending increased so dramatically. (While the Davis-Bacon Act, with its artificial wage floors, makes federal construction more expensive, that particular law dates back to 1931 and was in effect over the entire history of the interstate highway program.)

What forces, then, did drive the cost escalation? One key finding, the authors say, is that if a given community is wealthier, the state will wind up spending more to build a given mile of interstate. This effect increased over time.

To some extent, correlations of this sort might manifest themselves even if affluent neighborhoods do not exert any particular clout. Amenities that attract well-off residents, such as water views, may be the same ones highway builders take pains to avoid spoiling; municipalities may have reason to press for features such as noise barriers in places where property tax collections are high and officials have an incentive to keep property values from falling, and so forth.

Another possibility, however, is that wealthier persons are simply “more effective at voicing their interests in the political process.” The highway route gets diverted in a way that protects their amenity, but spoils some equally valued amenity in a less affluent neighborhood. The unwelcome extension is completed far behind schedule, with concomitant expense, because opponents have been skillful at working the system by stretching out hearings and reviews and then suing.

And here is where the concept of “citizen voice” comes in. Brooks and Liscow pinpoint the early 1970s as the inflection point for increased spending on highway projects. What was happening around that time? The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires environmental impact review for federally funded projects, was passed in 1970. California passed its considerably more stringent CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) the same year, and it was signed by none other than Gov. Ronald Reagan. In 1972 and 1973, Congress added additional federal laws that provided key leverage in fighting construction projects on the basis of loss of species habitat and wetlands. The U.S. Supreme Court helped out with the 1971 case of Citizens To Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe, which multiplied the chances to go to court over development by curtailing judges’ deference to agency decision making. All of these laws and decisions have made it much easier for citizens to contest infrastructure projects, driving up their cost and delaying their implementation and completion.

Among Brooks and Liscow’s most interesting findings is this: The relationship between local resident income and project expense took off just as these changes in law were coming online. Before 1970, the two were related modestly enough that the correlation failed to score as statistically significant. It then proceeded to quintuple.

The story the authors tell is complicated, not simple. They do not dispute that the new “citizen voice” laws brought some authentic benefits; objectors could bring genuinely useful information to the highway planners about ways to avoid environmental harm. They write that they do not have the means to choose between the “benign” interpretation of the cost facts (citizen voice allowed government to spend money so as to avoid harms that would have been objectively costly) and the “malign” interpretation (the process improved the relative position of some favored parties without adding much social value overall).

Somewhere, though, the late William Tucker is smiling. In “Environmentalism and the Leisure Class,” an influential 1977 Harper’s Magazine essay later expanded into the 1982 book Progress and Privilege, Tucker argued that the environmentalist banner, when waved against local development, offers a conveniently genteel way to “favor the status quo” for those whose “material comfort under the present system has been more or less assured.”

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Kentucky’s public education establishment loudly complained about legislation that would have forced school districts to compete for students—and on Wednesday, Gov. Andy Beshear did their bidding.

Beshear, a Democrat, vetoed a school choice bill that would have allowed families to cross district lines in pursuit of better schools, with education dollars following students who decided to switch from one school to another. The bill would have also created a $25 million scholarship fund—to be filled by donations from private businesses, for which they would receive state tax credits—that students in Kentucky’s three largest counties could have tapped to help pay for private school tuition, while students elsewhere could have used the money to hire tutors or pay other educational expenses.

The bill would “greatly harm education in Kentucky,” Beshear said in a video statement announcing the veto, by “taking money away from public schools.” In other words, students in failing public schools should be forced to remain there so those institutions can continue to collect tax dollars—because that’s what is important, right?

It is important to one group of people: the public school superintendents who demanded on Tuesday that Beshear veto the bill. “We believe in choice, and we’re willing to have that conversation,” said Marty Pollio, superintendent of Jefferson County Public Schools, which includes the city of Louisville. “It needs to be done right, and we need to fully fund public education before we set aside $25 million for private school scholarship tax credits.”

This is the game that the public school establishment plays when it comes to school choice. Sure, they “believe” in choice, but the “conversation” always has to wait for another day. And what, exactly, does “fully fund public education” even mean? Kentucky taxpayers already spend more than $14,000 per pupil. What’s the proper price tag?

Beshear, however, seems to have fully swallowed the education establishment’s vapid talking points. In his veto statement, the governor bemoaned how the school choice bill would send money to “unaccountable private organizations”—which is really quite unfair to the unaccountable public organizations that could be getting the funds instead.

Calling private schools unaccountable is ridiculous on its face. In order to stay in business, they have to attract students. Unlike public schools, they don’t get to take more money from taxpayers if they fail. Beshear knows this, of course, because he sent his own kids to private school—a decision that stirred a brief controversy during his successful 2018 run for governor.

But it wasn’t an irresponsible decision that caused Beshear’s hard-earned money to fall into the hands of unaccountable private organizations. It was a decision he made, as a parent, to give his kids the best chance to succeed in life.

Poorer families in Kentucky apparently don’t deserve the right to make that same choice.

“For too long, families in Kentucky who aren’t wealthy have been left with no choice when it comes to education,” Charles Leis, president of EdChoice Kentucky, which supported the school choice bill, said in a statement. “Beshear is wrong to veto House Bill 563. By doing so, he chose to listen to special interests like the [Kentucky Education Association, a teachers union] over the voice of Kentucky parents who are begging for help.”

There’s still a chance the bill could pass. In Kentucky, the state legislature can override a governor’s veto if a majority of all lawmakers vote to do so. The school choice bill, House Bill 563, cleared the Republican-controlled state Senate earlier this month with broad support but passed the Republican-controlled state House by a slim 48-47 margin. Because there are 100 seats in the lower chamber, 51 votes would be necessary to override Beshear’s veto.

Beshear has a long way to go to catch up with his New York and California counterparts in the ongoing contest to be America’s worst governor—but Wednesday’s veto shows he’s not ready to concede the race just yet.

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