Imagine a statute criminalizing the placement of curtains in home windows. After all, people regularly commit terrible crimes in the privacy of their own homes — perpetrating domestic violence, cooking up deadly drugs, storing illegal contraband, harboring fugitives, running kitchen-table scams, etc.

If at-home conduct were made visible to the police and the public, the reasoning goes, fewer acts of force and fraud would be committed. Lawmakers then discover that the Curtain Ban Act is insufficient to thwart criminals (and who objects to thwarting criminals?).