The estimate of just Federal statutes that are criminal is between 3,600 and 4,500. Add in the regulatory “laws” and that number balloons to over 300,000. As for the number of individual state laws and local laws, who the Hell knows. It has been claimed that everyone, no matter who you are and how “pure” you are, violates at least three laws per day that could send them to the pokey. The real issue is far too many laws for nearly everything, a law enforcement culture that uses these myriad laws to control those it wishes to control and the real effort to cow and scare the citizenry into blind and stupid docile obedience. It is what Rand wrote of in Atlas Shrugged. It is a situation that conservatives should be very angry about.
Can’t argue with that. But, is it the excessive number of laws that creates an irresponsible public, or is it an irresponsible public that results in an excessive number of laws?