This business about excessive and confusing and obsolete laws, and about difficult to interpret laws, is a big problem in the nation.
We need some kind of constitutional amendment that says that every law which is not written directly into the US Constitution has a Sunset date, and unless it's renewed by a vote of the appropriate legislative body it disappears from the books.
I base this theory on the fact that we are creating new laws faster than people can read them. Consider the 100 State legislative bodies and the two Federal bodies, and the lobbyists, bureaucrats, secretaries, assistants and scriveners attached to them. There must be over 50,000 people in DC alone, another 500,000 across the states, right now, trying to create new laws.
How many people are dedicated to removing obsolete laws?
Zippo. Zero. Ziltch.
How many people are tripped up by such laws, the non- uniformity of them as a body ,and most often of all by the sheer unnecessary volume of laws?
I don't know but I just read that over 100 convicted felons were absolved in time, before their execution, by DNA evidence.
So if it's that bad when it comes to Bloody Murder I must imagine that millions of people get picked up everyday (to an enormous cost in human time and effort) over unnecessary and absolute nonsense in the law.
There's an old story of a contest where they put a man into a locked room. No phone no computer. No bathroom. Just a bucket.
He was given some food, some water, and a pack of cigarettes.
He was to win the prize if he could stay in that room 24 hours without breaking the law.
When they open the door they immediately "arrested" him, because he had smoked the cigarettes without tearing the tax stamp first upon opening the package.
When you tear the tax stamp it's like canceling a postage stamp so that it cannot be used again.
GUILTY!