I’ve been thinking: Why is the Government allowed to make laws that aren’t fully defined? Such as the red flag law, which I won’t state my opinion on for this conversation, but just as an example, why can they simply say that they have “reasonable suspicion” or something to that nature to define the law? Shouldn’t they be required to write the book of how the law can be put into effect? Because if they don’t write that book, that gives the gov’t the right to simply say that anyone can be “reasonably suspicious”. And that’s not the kind of power that we would want to be giving to the gov’t, right? So how is it OK for them to create such laws? I personally don’t know what rules are required to create a law, but I think a requirement is that a law should be clearly defined. And this should be for all aspects of our laws. Either there’s all examples with all potential areas covered in writing, or the law can’t be made. Gun laws that aren’t defined clearly, etc. Any law put into effect should be covered with every example written, or the law shouldn’t be made. Why is that not the case? Why is it “legal” for lawmakers to create gray areas in laws, and am I wrong to think they should be writing every example of a law in order for it to be put into effect?
I am no expert on American laws - I just live here for work. Overall, I agree absolutely with this argument. We have something very similar in the UK, with hate crimes and legislation on “Gross offense”, which is what Count Dankula was charged under. You can suffer extra time in a prison and have your career options further jeopardised just because your victim feels the crime was because of a protected characteristic e.g. race, gender identity, sexual orientation, sex, religion. Not to mention these are unevenly enforced; a white/male/straight/christian is not likely to be believed. There is no effort whatsoever to define what constitutes “Gross offense” anywhere and I believe this is purposely done to convict people over hurt feelings. There was also a man named Harry Miller aka Harry the Owl who was phoned by the police to “check his thinking” for calling a transgender woman a man. Someone reported his tweets for hate and the “incident” is on his record, showing up in background checks for certain jobs such as teaching.
I recommend you listen to Harry speak about it.
Louis D. Brandeis once wrote: “A single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country”
It’s when the federal government overreaches or when the state government unilaterally decides what’s best that we run into problems described in the OP. The key component to trying out new laws is the involvement of the people in crafting them - the people have largely been removed from the process or treated as a nuisance at best.