It would be nice to have a magic wand. It would sure be handy when it came time to hang Christmas lights or get the holiday cards ready to mail. I’m sure politicians of every stripe wish they had one, too. “Abracadabra! Let there be no poverty!” “Poof! Debtus eliminatum!” “Kazaam! Misconduct Allegations Disappear-o!”

Sadly, neither the laws of envelope stuffing nor economics are subject to such daydreams. You wouldn’t know it, though, from what we hear from politicians and some political activists these days.

Consider the push to enforce the unenforceable firearm background check law that passed last November as Question 1. I, like most responsible gun owners, am perfectly happy with background checks. I deal with violent crime every day, and I don’t like felons or domestic batterers having guns. Even though most people intent on using guns to commit crimes will simply steal or illegally buy them from other thieves, there’s no reason to make things any easier for the bad guys. I don’t want to criminalize a family member or even a friend letting his buddy borrow a shotgun on a hunting trip, but requiring a check when selling to a total stranger on Craigslist or at a gun show? That’s manifestly reasonable to me.

The problem is that more background checks costs more money, generally spent on additional government bureaucrats to do the additional checking. Scrutiny ain’t free, people.

But “paying for stuff” often equals “higher taxes,” which voters don’t like. So supporters of the ballot question approving “expanded” background checks decided to pretend they had a magic wand. The law requires background checks for third party sales, but limits private dealers to only using federal resources, and affirmatively prohibits those wishing to conduct a private party background check from using the state’s Central Repository (which uses the federal NICS system, but has data the feds don’t, like information on locally issued restraining orders). (See Section 7 of the Initiative, now codified as NRS 202.254(3)(a).) Before the initiative, private parties could voluntarily get a background check done, and now they can’t even do that.

By the end of 9th grade civics class, every American ought to understand that state governments can’t dictate what the federal government will or won’t do. In this case, the FBI – under the Obama Administration, no less – predictably said it would refuse to honor the new law, which means there is nothing for state officials to rationally “implement” or enforce.

This is what happens when political rhetoric about laws becomes more important to lawmakers than what the laws (proposed or otherwise) actually say. In this case, authors of the ballot initiative either believed their own magical thinking, or were being deliberately dishonest about what their proposed law would actually do. In their letter urging the governor and attorney general to “work to implement this important Nevada law immediately,” district attorneys from L.A., New York, and Las Vegas actively ignore – or are unaware of – the legal impossibility of their demand. How can anyone claim this law is a “solution” to gun violence if they don’t understand the consequences of their own proposal as it was written?

Advocates of expanded background checks owed a duty to their supporters (and to the citizens of Nevada generally) to competently draft the proposed law so it would perform as advertised, and they failed. If you want to “close the gun show loophole,” they’re who you should be mad at, not Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who (along with Gov. Brian Sandoval) has refused to enforce the flawed law.

If writing or enforcing the law is your chosen gig, details should matter to you, and if they don’t, you should perhaps consider another line of work. Indeed – the law is so poorly constructed, and in such a specific way, that one more conspiracy-minded than myself would be forgiven for thinking they wrote it poorly on purpose just so they’d keep a handy political cudgel against 2nd Amendment-supporting opponents in the next election cycle.

As citizens, we all have responsibility for this, too. Please do me a favor, Dear Reader, and the next time you’re tempted to share a meme on Facebook about what this or that law will or won’t do, look for a reference or link to the actual bill or law, which should include whatever sub-section is specifically on point. Then look it up before hitting the Share button, and read it before getting outraged. If Facebook really wanted to cut down on “fake news,” they’d implement a citation requirement…

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The Question 1 debacle is just one example of the inability of too many of our political class to be bothered with paying attention to detail. Inflammatory rhetoric is soooo much easier when you don’t care about accuracy, after all. But this bipartisan disease has real consequences.

The amendments to existing statute comprised in Question 1 seemed relatively simple and short. They could be read in just a few minutes, and you didn’t need a law degree or expertise in firearms to comprehend the language. And even then, the vast majority of people voting for or against it, even those with incredibly strong opinions about it, could not be bothered to actually understand its effects.

Now consider these same folks overhauling our tax code. Or regulating our national health insurance markets. Or trying to police internet service providers.

In the best of governments, there are only so many hours in the day, and only so many changes to statutes or regulations that lawmakers can reasonably evaluate. We must insist that the people asking for our votes are willing to put in those hours and pay attention to those details. But more, we should all understand that the more we ask government to do for us, the less government will be able to competently handle. We must reject politicians clutching magic wands, and resist the temptation to clutch them ourselves.

Orrin Johnson has been writing and commenting on Nevada and national politics since 2007. He started with an independent blog, First Principles, and was a regular columnist for the Reno Gazette-Journal from 2015-2016. By day, he is a deputy district attorney for Carson City. His opinions here are his own. Follow him on Twitter @orrinjohnson, or contact him at [email protected].