Not much of a gambler here, but the way I look at it, if the casino gives me the form to fill out because of a huge win (which has never happened to me, by the way) then I would fill it out. I would not, however, report earnings that the casino didn’t tell me I “ought” to. And I don’t know anyone who does. I don’t even know what the cutoff point is. I’ve seen people at the race track win a couple grand. Do you report that? What about Bingo winnings? Friendly card games?
By the way…I almost never gamble, so this situation isn’t one I come upon more than about once every ten years. But it strikes me as rather silly that anyone would try very hard to comply when it’s virtually unenforceable.
Show of hands, please…how many of you report your gambling earnings? I’m guessing less than 5% of the people in this thread are compliant. That doesn’t change the “right” or “wrong” of it. I’m just curious.
I am reasonably certain that I have never committed a felony in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
I for one have faith that Bricker owes the government nothing whatsoever in connection with his gambling pastime.
There may be something to the OP, though - even America’s leaders can’t seem to avoid tumbling into lawlessness (from abcnews.com):
*By NEDRA PICKLER
WASHINGTON Feb 14, 2006 (AP)— Vice President Dick Cheney has been given a warning citation for breaking Texas hunting law by failing to buy a $7 stamp allowing him to shoot upland game birds. *
So alright, I get a kick out of seeing the name “Nedra Pickler”. Sue me.
That’s true, there is nothing criminal in making a simple mistake. However, if you did find a $20 bill, and you deliberately did not report it as income, then it would techically be a crime.
If I fail to keep a record of my gambling losses, I cannot deduct them to offset my gambling winnings. This makes compliance with this law advisable, practical, and desirable.
I don’t play the ponies. I do report winnings from “friendly” poker games – and I deduct losses from friendly poker games. There’s nothing to it. I have a pocket PC; it has a spreadsheet, and I make a notation at the end of each event. This also ensures that I’ll never delude myself about how well, or poorly, I’m doing gambling. It’s all there in black and white.
How often does this happen? Reading your poses, it would seem the streets are awash in currency, and people are pocketing it left and right without reporting it, knowing their actions are criminal. I’m saying that’s it’s not so… and to your udnerlying point, I’m saying there is not a “vast morass” of law that people violate every day. Every time someone makes a similar claim, I challenge them to provide specifics. About the only case that meets this criteria are motor vehicle laws. I grant that most of us violate the motor vehicle code repeatedly on a daily basis… but those are not crimes.
Bricker, I find it hard to believe that someone who lives in Virginia never violated their anti-sodamy laws. The laws covered pretty much anything fun and applied to heterosexuals as well (married or not).
So either you are mistaken that you have not committed a felony, or you have a really boring sex life.
(yes, I know those laws were recently overturned, but I believe he has been in NoVa for a while now)
The law in question was found to be unconstitutional. That means it was ALWAYS unconstitutional. In other words, if I “carnally knew [someone] with the mouth” in 1982, that act was legal. We didn’t know that then. If we were having this conversation pre-Lawrence v. Texas, you might have a point. But the effect of a finding that a law is unconstitutional means that any act seemingly violative of that law cannot be criminally punished. It was never illegal, even though we all thought it was at the time.
Agreed, but it’s easy to forget a $20 bill, and the IRS knows that thus it’s a crime that would never be prosecuted in my opinion.
To answer Kalhoun’s question, I too gamble a good bit and I’ve always reported all of my earnings.
I have a lot of earnings (not gambling related) that I could lie about every single year and probably never get caught. In my area many people leave their doors unlocked all day long, I could easily go into my neighbor’s house and steal a TV or some petty cash, but I don’t. If something is a crime then it’s a crime whether you are in danger of getting caught or not, and if it’s a moral wrong then you’ve done something wrong whether you get caught or not. So why do it?
**Bricker ** is what I would call a compulsive gambler. I bet when he beats his kids at Monopoly, he takes a careful account of his winnings, and sends off a 1040 to Parker Brothers at the end of the year, paid in Monopoly money. But I’m a little impressed that when he says he’s not a felon, he can assert that with a degree of exactitude that the rest of us can only marvel at.
As to the OP, I guess I don’t believe that American is overcriminalized. One problem is that laws don’t have expiration dates generally, so what you see is the effect of accretion. A rough corrective is provided by unwillingness of the system to prosecute people for trivial or outdated laws. Besides, since we’re a democracy, the laws are, grosso modo, the emanation of the popular will. Just because we all (with the exception of Bricker) have violated some of them does not mean they’re either ill-conceived or pointless.
The 2000 Census supplementary survey found something like 658,000 gay couples. That’s couples. Let’s assume these couples aren’t particularly sexually active, and lets estimate they only have sex once every two weeks. That’s a very conservative estimate.
That’s around 17m acts violating various sodomy laws in a year under an extremely conservative estimate of gay couples only. Add in all the gays who aren’t in a relationship, and then all the heterosexuals who practice oral or anal sex and the total number of sex acts violating these various statutes is probably in the billions in any given year.
Compare that with the number of actual charges filed and it’s obvious we’re talking about one of the if not the most underenforced set of statutes in the United States.
Plus of course the Lawrence case means that any law prohibiting oral/anal is unconstitutional anyways, so it’s a moot point.
I don’t get this theory that everyone has violated the law.
Like Bricker I’d like someone to demonstrate a reasonable (and constitutionally acceptable) law that there’s some “good chance” I’ve violated.
None of the ones mentioned so far fit (I live in Virginia as well, by the way.) Anti-sodomy laws were unconstitutional, just because they are still on the books does not change that fact. Once a law is declared unconstitutional it’s not necessarily the case that other levels of government will strike their statutes from the books. However just because they are on the books doesn’t change the fact they are unconstitutional and would be unenforceable if ever challenged in court.
A law is more than just a few lines of text in a criminal code, it has to have real power in the world or it isn’t really law.
Not to contradict St. Bricker, but traffic offenses can certainly be crimes. For example, ever driven while talking on a cellphone? If so, there are certain places where that is illegal, even if it is “just a traffic offense.” While I trust Bricker is careful to use a handsfree phone and is hyper aware of when he enters a jurisdiction that bans cellphones while driving, many of the rest of us are not .
I’m of the opinion that some laws are just plain stupid. We overcriminalize tons of stuff in these here united states. The answer, for me anyway, it to weigh the harm done if these stupid laws aren’t followed. Smoking pot, for instance. I don’t think it’s anyone’s business what a person smokes if they feel like getting a buzz. Therefore, it’s ok to break that law. Waiting for the legislators to wake up and “smell the bud” so to speak, is taking decades. Sometimes it makes more sense to just ignore the stupidity.
Traffic offenses are genwerally not crimes. Speeding is illegal, but speeding is not a crime. In general, states’ laws describe violation of traffic laws as “offenses” or “infractions” that are not criminal in nature. There are certainly some traffic laws that describe crimes - DUI, reckless driving, driving on suspended or revoked licenses – these kind of acts are often criminal. But the law distinguishes between “offenses” and “crimes”. It is that distinction I’m referring to.
Now, point me at a state that makes cellphone use while driving a CRIME, rather than merely an offense or an infraction.
For the purposes of this thread, that distinction, although true, seems irrelevant. A mere traffic offense can require the appearance before a judge and submission to a penalty, even if it isn’t the jail or prison time that a commission of crime would require. The OP SuaSponte referred to the laws he’d broken, which included traffic offenses. Differeniating between traffic offenses and crimes is a difference that makes no difference, other than to hair splitters. I’ll gladly stipulate that both friend Bricker and Martin Hyde, as well as my mother, have never ever broken any laws of any kind whatsoever. Most of the rest of us, myself included, cannot make that claim.
