You’re a good person, aren’t you?
Of course, you are. You are well mannered and polite, would never hurt anyone else intentionally, and would only strike out in an attempt to protect those you love.
I’m willing to be bet most people are this way. So why do we have such restrictive laws? If someone can’t make the right moral decisions in-line with societal norms, will a law that says that they aren’t allowed to do certain things really going to prevent them from lashing out or staying within the limits of that law? Do "gun-free zones" really keep those that wish to do harm out of those areas? No. But, they will get the person in trouble who carries a firearm for their own protection. There was a recent robbery and shooting in a San Antonio, Texas mall (a gun free zone), that ended with two deaths and multiple injuries. A good samaritan who was legally carrying concealed shot and killed one of the robbery suspects. That good samaritan could now face charges of his own.The United States prides itself on being a “Free” nation, yet we have the HIGHEST INCARCERATION RATE IN THE WORLD with a rate of 698 per 100,000 (according to United Nations crime statistics).
As a well-developed nation, we easily outpace every other country (to include our enemies that we vilify as being not free). With an average of 2.2 million people behind bars, we incarcerate as much as Russia (1.6M) and China (0.6M) COMBINED, with rates of 121 and 474 per 100K, respectively. Granted, I'm going to take those two numbers with a grain of salt considering the amount of deaths at the hands of their own government in those two countries.
Even so, with incarceration rates as high as ours, you would think that we lived in a lawless society. Nothing could be further from the truth.
We have hundreds of thousands of laws on the books. So much so, that at any given time you could be breaking the law and not even know it!
Did you not come to a complete stop at that stop sign? CRIMINAL!
Did you not tell the IRS about ALL of those tips you made? CRIMINAL!
Did you collect rainwater on your property in order to ease your municipal water bill and water your garden? CRIMINAL!
Did you go fishing without permission from the government? CRIMINAL!!!
I could go on with gambling, various drugs, public drunkenness, etc., where no one is victimized, but you get the point.