Overruling the voters

RESIDENTS of Nevada voted in November to require background checks for most private gun sales. But nearly a year after the ballot measure passed, these checks aren’t being made because state officials have claimed that there’s no way to carry out the policy.

Such background checks might not have prevented the massacre in Las Vegas on Sunday night; the gunman, Stephen Paddock, is not known to have a significant criminal record and appears to have bought at least some of his guns from dealers required to vet buyers.

But it has been shown that requiring checks on private sales of guns makes it harder for felons to buy firearms.

It is a common-sense gun-safety policy that most Americans and most gun owners have long supported. Even as Congress, cowed by the National Rifle Association’s opposition, has refused to act to limit the danger of unexamined sales, 19 states, including Nevada, have tightened background checks on handgun sales and 13 states, including Nevada, have tightened them for handgun and longgun sales.

After Governor Brian Sandoval, a Republican, vetoed legislation to tighten background checks in Nevada in 2013, public interest groups took the matter to the state’s voters through a ballot initiative known as Question 1. A narrow majority voted for Question 1.

The group behind the ballot proposal has threatened to sue the state if the governor doesn’t start putting the ballot proposal into effect by October 9.

When voters become so frustrated by federal and state lawmakers’ inaction that they take matters into their own hands, officials beholden to the gun lobby cannot be allowed to block them.