I think a better analogy would be a bear-trap or a land-mine. The powers granted to government exist to deny life, liberty and property to those who violate the law. They're fundamentally destructive. Although we intend that they only be used in suppressing illegitimate force and fraud, that's not always the case.

Under this analogy, I think it's quite reasonable to question why we have so many of these very dangerous laws just lying around waiting to ruin someone's life. Absent very compelling and readily apparent reasons for keeping them in place, the default course of action should be to disable and remove them as quickly as is safe to do.

"A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held, and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and inalienable rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson on the dubiousness of pre-supposing that perfect and timeless wisdom guided anyone who's ever deigned to enact a law.