When state and local officials decline to help enforce federal firearm rules they view as unconstitutional, The ‘New York Times’ says, they are adopting “a legally shaky but politically potent strategy” with racist roots. But when state and local officials decline to help enforce federal immigration rules they view as “unjust, self-defeating and harmful to public safety,” the ‘Times’ says, they should be “proud” of “choos[ing] not to participate in deportation crackdowns.”
That blatant double standard illustrates how policy preferences and partisan allegiances color people’s views of federalism, which they tend to endorse when it serves their purposes and reject when it doesn’t. But as Missouri Gov. Mike Parson and Attorney General Eric Schmitt recently observed while defending that state’s Second Amendment Preservation Act, “you cannot have it both ways.”
— Jacob Sullum in The Feds Can’t Compel States to Enforce Restrictions on Guns or Immigrants
