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The Times has a detailed featured about the aftermath of New York’s SAFE Act, a wide-ranging gun control enacted in the hasty aftermath of the mass killing in Newtown. A few lessons can be gleaned.

First, people do not like having their gun rights restricted–and they do not get over these kinds of things.

But in pushing for passage of strict new gun laws, Mr. Cuomo alienated a vocal constituency across upstate New York, a region he has otherwise wooed. In court, gun owners have challenged the constitutionality of the laws; on lawn signs and bumper stickers in places like the Catskills and western New York, they demand their repeal.

Counties, towns and villages have passed resolutions denouncing the laws, and some counties have even demanded that their official seals not be used on any paperwork relating to them. In response to an open records request, the governor’s office shared hundreds of pages of such resolutions, from far-flung places like the Adirondack town of North Hudson, with 238 residents, as well as from more populous ones like Erie County.

“The calculation when it was passed was people were going to get mad for a little while and then get over it,” Stephen J. Aldstadt, the president of the Shooters Committee on Political Education, said. “I don’t think people are getting over it.”

Second, the hastily-put-together law has proved difficult to implement.

Despite its scope, the Safe Act was not everything it was originally intended to be, and there were stumbles. A provision limiting the size of gun magazines, for example, turned out to be unworkable….

Requiring background checks for ammunition sales, another aspect of the laws, has not been put into effect, because the state has not yet established a system for conducting the checks. And there are lingering questions among officials as varied as sheriffs and county clerks about what the laws require of them.

Third, making people register their guns proves to be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

One of the most controversial elements of the Safe Act was its requirement that the owners of firearms defined under the laws as assault weapons register them with the State Police.

Many gun owners said they would refuse to comply; the deadline passed on April 15. The State Police have refused to say how many gun owners have registered; a spokeswoman, Darcy Wells, asserted that such information was exempt from disclosure under New York’s Freedom of Information Law….

Some data released by the state shows that one major fear among gun owners has not come to fruition: Law enforcement officials have not gone out of their way to enforce provisions of the Safe Act against otherwise law-abiding state residents.

You don’t say!

Through late September, when data was most recently available, the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services said that no arrests had been reported to the agency for the misdemeanor of failing to register an assault weapon — the requirement that many gun owners have openly defied.

I previously noted that as many as one million New Yorkers will not register their guns. Connecticut hasn’t even bothered to enforce their own law. About 300,000 have refused. So now what? Do the police go door to door searching for weapons?

For now, gun rights experts say, the outcome in New York is uncertain. Will the state take the initiative to seize unregistered weapons? If it doesn’t, will the new gun controls be exposed as toothless, even meaningless?

“The line in the sand has been drawn, and if Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants to send state police out on house-to-house searches and put hundreds of thousands of people in prison, they can do that,” says Dave Kopel, research director at the Independence Institute, a free-market think tank in Denver.

In Arizona v. United States, the Court found that state efforts to enforce immigration laws frustrated the federal immigration policy (which included a lot of non-enforcement), and was thus unconstitutional. I think SB 1070 in Arizona was best understood as either a 4th Amendment or Equal Protection violation depending on how it was enforced, but DOJ brought a pre-enforcement challenge on supremacy clause grounds. (As chance would have it, I write this post in Phoenix Skyharbor Airport waiting for my eventual chariot home to Houston).

Since then, I’ve been keeping a close eye on how other states enact policies that come into conflict with federal law–and the lack of any reaction from DOJ. Recently, New York City proposed a law that would give its police authority the power to ignore a federal warrant signed by a federal judge, if the City determines the individual is not dangerous. This is a clear frustration of federal immigration law, but I haven’t heard a peep from DOJ about a possible pre-enforcement challenge.

Another example popped up yesterday. A Doctor who knows no borders, who treated Ebola patients in Africa, has now brought the disease back to the Big Apple. And, it turns out, he travelled on several subway lines, went bowling in Williamsburg, and did all the things a New Yorker would do. In response, Governor Cuomo of New York and Governor Christie of New Jersey  “announced Friday that medical personnel returning to New York after treating Ebola patients in West Africa would be automatically subject to a 21-day quarantine.” This quarantine will be enforced by the states, and not the federal government.

The United States, as a matter of policy, has chosen not to implement mandatory quarantines for people returning from this region who treated Ebola patients. Why? We can’t be certain, but as the Times reports, “restrictions like those adopted by New York and New Jersey could cripple volunteers’ efforts at the front lines of the epidemic.” While it is often impossible to determine what exactly are the interests of the United States, here it seems that the federal government, pursuant to its plenary powers over foreign relations, has decided that our policy should not discourage people from helping others. Imposing travel bans and quarantines may harm the aid effort. (This calculus may seem entirely backwards to me, but whatever).

Is New York and New Jersey’s policy legal? The Times observes that “although the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sets the baseline for recommended standards on Ebola, state and local officials have the prerogative to tighten the regimen as they see fit.”

This statement is at odds with DOJ’s position in Arizona v. United States. The federal government set the “baseline” standard for immigration authority, and Arizona was absolutely trying to “tighten” the immigration enforcement regime. DOJ took the position that any effort to help enforce (help?) the law actually frustrated the federal government’s priorities. Now, one difference is that states, under the police power, have plenary powers over the health, safety, and welfare of their people. States do not have the same authority under the immigration power. But the dynamic is exactly the same. If we take the supremacy clause as seriously as the DOJ does, even a state’s police power–the most important element of state autonomy– gives way to federal power.

Is it the case that the Executive’s policy with respect to foreign nations–and desire to encourage doctors to travel to Africa–trumps a state’s ability to stop a potential epidemic from spreading? Think carefully before you answer that question yes. If so, the DOJ bold position in Arizona v. US becomes a bit more precarious.

Now, I don’t expect the Obama Administration to file a pre-enforcement challenge to this quarantine.

Today, on my way back from a talk in Sacramento, I had to schedule my flight back through Phoenix because there were no direct flights. My flight was scheduled to leave Sacramento at 4:15, with an estimated arrival time of 6:02. My connecting flight was to leave Phoenix for Houston at 6:50. That gave me a solid 45 minutes to make the connection. Not the best route, but it was my only way of getting home Friday. I’ve made tighter connections.

We pulled from the gate at 4:20. After 10 minutes of not moving, I realized something was up. Ten minutes later, the Captain made an announcement how there was some sort of navigation computer problem and they had to shut down the plane and turn it back on. (I’ve found the reboot method to be a common approach to troubleshooting both planes and PCs running Windows 95). Thirty minutes later, the Captain announced that the reboot worked, and it would take a few minutes to cycle through all the systems. Then we taxied, and because we missed our initial slot, we didn’t take off till 5:00. The flight to Phoenix was about 1:40. My estimated time of arrival was 6:40, giving me 10 minutes to make the flight. The inflight WiFi reminded me of that fact as the circled the airport twice for reasons that infuriate me.

We landed, and I ran as fast as I could. I made it to the gate about 1 minute too late. Yes, the door closed about 60 seconds after I got there. I knew once the door was closed, that was it (this has happened to me before). The gate agent said they couldn’t wait any longer. As a result of not waiting another 120 seconds, U.S. Airways had to pay for a hotel for me (Embassy Suites), and rebook me on the next flight. I’m sure others on my flight got the same deal.

Now, I have a question that I don’t know the answer to. What are the economics for holding connecting flights after a delay. U.S. Airways knew my flight was delayed. There were many other people on their way to Houston who were on the same flight. We were all going to be there within 5 minutes of the scheduled departure time. Why wouldn’t they just wait a few more minutes? This flight was not scheduled to land in Houston until after 11:00 p.m., and there were no other flights outbound that night. Even after they closed the door, the plane remained at the gate for another 15 minutes (taunting me).

If they know an inbound flight was delayed, why can’t they wait a few minutes at the gate?

In any event, due to this delay, this week I will have woken up in 4 different time zones. Eventually I’ll get home.

Is it the case that gridlock is worse today than during the Clinton years? The Times has a feature that shows how partisanship has increased over the last 20 years.

Congressional Republicans, of course, have also refused to reach across the aisle and work with Mr. Obama the way they did in Mr. Lott’s era. The current Congress is on track to become one of the least legislatively productive in recent history. That is partly because Mr. Obama faces a far more polarized electorate than Mr. Clinton did.

Over the past 20 years, the number of Americans who hold extreme conservative or liberal views has doubled from 10 percent in 1994 to 21 percent in 2014, according to the Pew Research Center. And the middle ground has shrunk, with 39 percent of Americans taking a roughly equal number of liberal and conservative positions, compared with 49 percent in 1994.

The tails are getting fatter, and the middle is getting smaller. There is less room of compromise.

Another factoid to add to this increasing political polarization are numbers concerning “partyism.” As Cass Sunstein explained, today more people would be adverse to their child dating someone of a different political party than of a different.

Researchers have long asked such questions about race, and have found that along important dimensions, racial prejudice is decreasing. At the same time, party prejudice in the U.S. has jumped, infecting not only politics but also decisions about dating, marriage and hiring. By some measures, “partyism” now exceeds racial prejudice — which helps explain the intensity of some midterm election campaigns.

In 1960, 5 percent of Republicans and 4 percent of Democrats said that they would feel “displeased” if their son or daughter married outside their political party. By 2010, those numbers had reached 49 percent and 33 percent. Republicans have been found to like Democrats less than they like people on welfare or gays and lesbians. Democrats dislike Republicans more than they dislike big business.

While I applaud how far we have come on racism, I lament partyism. We live in an increasingly polarized world, and Congress is a manifestation of that.

When partisanship increases, it is no surprise that the members sent to Congress are more polarized, and there is less middle ground for compromise. This is one aspect of gridlock that people are often unfamiliar with–gridlock reflects the populace. If the people don’t agree on how to tackle big problems, then it is totally unsurprising when Congress also cannot agree.

 

Robert Barnes has published a piece in the Washington Post about fun ways to follow the Supreme Court. We are extremely excited about his extensive coverage of FantasySCOTUS, LexPredict, and {Marshall}+.

Here are the highlights:

And while a justice’s decisions are drawn from years of legal experience, ideology, constitutional interpretation and a keen attention to facts, Josh Blackman thinks even high school students can predict the outcome. HisSupreme Court fantasy leagues let thousands of enthusiasts play along.

…

Blackman, a professor at the South Texas College of Law, started his Scotus prediction site website because “I thought it would be a fun game for Supreme Court nerds.” But he was surprised at how many there were.

FantasyScotus has grown to have dozens of leagues such as “Big Dicta” and “You Can’t Handle the Ruth”–another tribute to Ginsburg, it appears–and players can compete for a $10,000 prize.

…

Blackman also subscribes to the theory that “the more we can understand the court, the better off we all are.” He started the fantasy league predicting Supreme Court outcomes in 2009, not really knowing who would sign up.

He estimates that 25,000 players have participated since then. Through The Harlan Institute, Blackman has created lesson plans for teachers and a prediction contest for high school students.

…

And this year at FantasySCOTUS, Thomson-Reuters is offering cash prizes for the player with the most accurate predictions.

Blackman will be among those playing, to some extent. Along with fellow law professors Dan Katz and Michael J. Bommarito of Michigan State University, Blackman developed a head-spinningly complex machine-learning algorithm that they say can predict Supreme Court cases at 70% accuracy.

The professors call their algorithm {Marshall}+, after Chief Justice John Marshall. Blackman is now recruiting a team of Supreme Court experts to compete against. It would be like that time the computer Watson took on the humans in Jeopardy!

But Blackman thinks the contest will be more like spring training, where he discovers in what kinds of cases {Marshall}+ excells, and those in which he (it?) falters.

For this term, at least, he expects the humans to win.

Update: The Story appears on A1, below the fold! The PDF is here.