Sobering Funny

For the last five years plus, Mike Chase has been tweeting a federal crime each day. Earlier this month he collected many of them in a book, which varies between the funniest and most depressing publication ever created outside of an actual government document.

It's funny, of course, because some of the laws are very stupid. While there is almost certainly some sense behind regulating how much cash a person may have when he or she leaves the country, or mandating that he or she report the amount, some of the specifics are ridiculous. You can't leave carrying more than $5 worth of nickels, for example, reported or otherwise. You could face up to five years in prison if you do.

These are not simply outdated laws which were never repealed and which circumstances make enforcement (or violation) unlikely. Some of them are more recent. We could understand that astronauts would not want to be bothered by people asking them to take things on their trips so that those things could be accurately described as having been to space. We could understand that NASA might want to prevent such annoyances, and also prevent astronauts from engaging in some side hustles that involved taking unauthorized things into space that could later be sold. Especially these days, when we don't have our own ride into space and have to hitch from people who might decide to charge us by the ounce.

But there is an actual federal law -- not a NASA policy, not a workplace rule, a Federal law prohibiting you or me from asking that such an item be taken into space unless we ourselves are going into space with it. Again, not taking such an item or hiding it in the astronaut's packed socks, but just asking. According to Chase, it's 18 USC §799 & 14 CFR §1214.604(a).

Well, what's the not funny or depressing part of that? It's this: There were, once upon a time, people in the United States government who were willing to have you or me shot dead rather than go to the trouble of telling us no when we asked to have something taken into space by an astronaut. Overblown? No. Federal law is enforced by Federal law enforcement agencies such as the FBI or the US Marshals service or Department of the Treasury, or so on. These law enforcement agencies employ armed people to apprehend the people accused of breaking federal laws. If we are accused and we resist they are authorized to use legitimate levels of force to apprehend us, and if we suffer injury in the process they're immune from prosecution and it's our fault. If we resist with a level of force that makes these agents fear for their lives or the lives of people around them, they can shoot us. And even if someone later finds out that we didn't ask any astronauts to carry anything into space, we are still dead and they are still employed.

Of course it's an unlikely scenario. Of course most interactions with law enforcement, even antagonistic ones, do not end in fatalities or even permanent injuries -- the regular claims of certain lawyers notwithstanding. The issue is that people who make laws and regulations were OK with the possibility, however unlikely, of those outcomes.

Some things should very much be against the law. Decriminalizing murder because sometimes murderers who resist arrest get shot, for example, is a bad idea, and people who want to pass laws against murder can, I think, look in our mirrors and say, well, this has to be done in order for us to have a civil society. We might not like knowing someone died while resisting arrest for the law we passed against murder, but we could live with ourselves.

Could we live with ourselves knowing that someone died resisting arrest for carrying three full rolls of nickels in their pockets across the border, instead of just two and a half? Or for asking some NASA flunky to sneak a stamp into an astronaut's suitcase? I'd hope not. And for what it's worth, I'd be happy to vote for any candidate who said that his or her primary job if elected would be working to repeal those laws.

Along with most if not all of the rest of them that Mr. Chase lists on his Twitter feed.