You hit the nail on the head. We have too many laws. There is not way citizens can keep track of all of them. There is no way police can enforce all of them.
So the police are in a position to pick which they will enforce.
Hate crimes is an example. Nobody commits murder, rape, assault or even vandalism out of love or respect. It is always out of hate/evil motives. To make hate an additional crime is going too far.
Take identity group laws. Pre-60s a murder was murder of 1st or 2d degree or manslaughter based solely on the extent of pre-meditation and other aspects of the accused. But starting in the 60s we created special classes of victims. Killing the President, or killing a policeman was more heinous than killing a kid in the Pulse or a kid on Chicago’s Southside.
By law society said that the life of a kid on the southside is worth less than the life of a polic officer. Then we wonder why we have the mess we have.
Of course, these are just isolated examples of a genderal decay into identity police work that holds a person more..or less... guilty .. or innocent based on his identity group.
At first, society thought identity group politics made sense. Allegedly it made sense to treat police special. But now we have the bounce back of identity politics where the life of a criminal is now more valued than that of the police.
In the 60s and 70s that bounce-back was predicted by many of us, most notably libertarians like John Hosper. But also by many commonsense analysts.
We need to remove many laws.
Good post. Thanks.