Your incredulity suggests you think there was a time when laws "made sense." Having spent a great deal of time digging into law, and it's foundations, the only law that makes sense is:

"Thou shalt not intentionally and directly infringe on the rights of another person."

Past that, pretty much everything is fuckery. More specifically, pretty much everything is an attempt by the PTB to legalize their infringement on the rights of everyone.