Playing with fire

Connecticut's government risks loss of legitimacy over its largely ignored gun registration push.

J.J. Tuccille writes at Reason.com:

Here's the thing: Laws rely, almost entirely, on voluntary compliance, with enforcement efforts sufficient for a tiny, noncompliant minority. If a large number of people to whom a law applies find the law repugnant—and a majority of a group, consisting of scores of thousands of people, constitutes a large number—than the law is unenforceable, no matter how many politicians and newspaper editorial writers think it's a swell idea. Governments that try enforcement, anyway, will be stuck in a pattern of escalating brutality and declining legitimacy.