zlacker

It's de facto legal if you'll get away with it. Lon Horiuchi executed (sniped from a distance) an innocent woman holding a child at Ruby Ridge over what was ultimately a missed court date for a crime her husband was acquitted of. He was then promoted and went on to take part in Waco.

When he was prosecuted, the feds played jurisdiction games fucking with the case until the case was so cold it was difficult to prosecute.

  The U.S. Attorney filed a notice of removal of the case to federal court, which automatically took effect under the statute for removal jurisdiction[11] where the case was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge on May 14, 1998, who cited the supremacy clause of the Constitution which grants immunity to federal officers acting in the scope of their employment.[6]

  The decision to dismiss the charges was reversed by an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit, which held that enough uncertainty about the facts of the case existed for Horiuchi to stand trial on state manslaughter charges.[6] Ultimately, the then-sitting Boundary County prosecutor, Brett Benson, who had defeated Woodbury in the 2000 election, decided to drop the charges, because he felt it was unlikely the state could prove the case and too much time had passed.

>>mothba+(OP)
Illegal but unenforced is still illegal.

>>croon+701
de jure illegal but unenforced is de facto legal.

de jure legal but enforced is de facto illegal.

>>mothba+uI1
Which is why de facto legality is very low value discussion fodder in an environment of rampant unenforcement of laws.

>>croon+qN1
Quite the contrary, in such an environment it is even more important to figure out what is de facto legal because you cannot count on reading the law to determine such.

>>mothba+uI1
As someone who often makes a distinction between de jure and de facto, "de facto legal" is an oxymoron. Per Gödel, that lets you prove anything.

>>mothba+dQ1
In such an environment "what" is irrelevant, it's merely about "who".