Opinion
Ever tried counting how many laws you’re supposed to follow? Good luck.
A former U.S. Attorney, now with Right on Crime, points out a brutal truth: nobody knows how many federal crimes are on the books. Thousands? Tens of thousands? Pick a number. Add in state laws and the 300,000 regulatory offenses some bureaucrat cooked up, and it’s a mess.
This isn’t just confusing—it’s dangerous, especially for those of us who care about our rights, like the Second Amendment.
Too many laws shred fairness. James Madison nailed it in the Federalist Paper #62:
“It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow.”
If laws pile up so high you can’t read them—or get so tangled you can’t understand them—they’re useless to regular people. Here in 2025, we’re living that warning.
Prosecutors can flip through thousands of crimes, find one, and pin it on you just because they feel like it. That’s not justice—it’s a power grab.
Gun owners know the sting. The ATF’s rulebook is a minefield—barrel lengths, stock types, ammo storage rules. Miss some obscure regulation you didn’t even know existed, and you’re a criminal. Doesn’t matter if you’re a law-abiding hunter or a range regular; the system’s rigged to catch you. It’s not just guns, either—importing flowers wrong or shipping seafood in the “wrong” bag can sink you too.
Over 4,000 federal crimes are out there, and that’s a lowball since even Congress couldn’t count them all.
This overcriminalization chaos crosses party lines, but it’s freedom-minded folks who should feel it most. It’s “antithetical to our nation’s founding principles,” as the testimony puts it.
The Founders didn’t write the Constitution, so some D.C. suit could bury us in laws we can’t track. They wanted clarity, not this mess. Yet prosecutors play whack-a-mole with our lives, and gun owners are prime targets.
The fix? Quit turning every little thing into a crime.
Fines or market forces can handle business stuff—save the criminal hammer for real bad guys, not someone who missed a paperwork detail. Let states handle their own business; federal overreach fueled this tangle. And make sure laws require intent—no more “guilty because we say so” nonsense.
Gun laws prove the point. Estimates bounce around—hundreds at the state level, thousands with local rules—but no one’s got a hard number. Giffords claims over 700 “gun safety” laws have passed since 2012, just the big ones. Everytown’s database tracks more, but it’s still a guess. More laws, more traps—not safety.
How many laws is too many when your rights are on the line?
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About Tred Law
Tred Law is your everyday patriot with a deep love for this country and a no-compromise approach to the Second Amendment. He does not write articles for Ammoland every week, but when he does write, it is usually about liberals Fing with his right to keep and bear arms.
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There is a old saying that a clever and cunning prosecutor can frame any man for bank robbery.
Hev looks like, is similar to a bank robber, you have wrong politics, youve been critizing politicians, and into jail you go.
There are way too many laws. Each time the politicians pass another, it is the one that will stop crime. Yeah, right. Read the other day, a woman crossed from El Paso, Texas to Juarez, and Mexico police searched her car and found $300,000 in US currency. Who says crime doesn’t pay? Isn’t there something like 25,000 or so laws on the books about guns? So how come that hasn’t stopped criminals, street gangs and drug dealers? A survival site note that there is something like 2 million laws on the books in America, with something like 50 tp 100… Read more »
See the paper- “Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime” https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2203713OR the book-
“Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent”https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6611240-three-felonies-a-day
“Malum in se” vs “Malum prohibitum” has been argued since before the Latin terms came into existence.
We are far past time to relegate the latter to violations and leave the former as crimes.
Just our Minnesota hunting law book, is so confusing and filled with so many contradictions, you almost need a lawyer to guide you to hunt, legally.
Even our state forest signs, telling you what’s allowed and not allowed, will contradict each other, in the same state forest, on the same trail, even 1/4 mile apart. And contradict what’s in the law book!
a law for everything so they can attack their enemies even if they have done nothing wrong ..just like they tried to do to trump