At 6:32 PM 9/6/95, Al Thompson wrote:

At 02:00 AM 9/6/95 -0400, Black Unicorn wrote:

...

Created crimes are few and far between.

You mean like buying a 30 round magazine, or putting a different stock of your choice on a rifle, or owning an automatic weapon, or mailing crypto out of the country, or hiring someone due to their race, or not hiring someone because they are "fat?"

Or drinking alcohol, or owning gold, or possessing a copy of a Traci Lords video, or selling bullets recently declared illegal, or having a "men only" gym (but "women only" gyms are legal), or making condoms available, or not making condoms available, or teaching women how to use birth control, or denying a Satanist a job at a child care center on the basis of his religious beliefs, and so on. Too many transient, created crimes. To answer Lucky's original question, one way to measure the total number of new laws--most of them covering "created crimes"--is to measure the total number of volumes of statutes at the Federal, state, and local levels. I've seen figures on the "linear feet" of regulations, and how they are growing exponentially, but I don't recall the numbers. Something like the total number of laws doubling every 10 years or so, but don't quote me on this one. Whether these are "created crimes" in most cases is unclear, but certainly the really basic crimes (murder, assault, rape, theft, etc.) were adequately covered 20 years ago, or 50 years ago, etc. I can see some reasons for refining the definitions in the light of new situations, but I have to conclude that _most_ of the vast number of new laws and statutes deal with "created crimes," as I understand the term. --Tim May ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."