Tiangou wrote:
[quote=Smote]
"The laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are
neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that
those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity...will
respect the less important and arbitrary ones... Such laws make things worse
for the assaulted and better for the assailants, they serve rather to
encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with
greater confidence than an armed man."
Cesare Beccaria
Thomas Jefferson's response in his Commonplace Book:
"False idee de utilita."
(False ideas of utility.)
It wasn't a "response" it was the way of highlighting back then.
"A principal source of errors and injustice are
false ideas of utility. For example: that legislator has false ideas of utility who considers particular more than general conveniencies, who had rather command the sentiments of mankind than excite them, and dares say to reason, `Be thou a slave’; who would sacrifice a thousand real advantages to the fear of an imaginary or trifling inconvenience; who would deprive men of the use of fire for fear of their being burnt, and of water for fear of their being drowned; and who knows of no means of preventing evil but by destroying it." The next lines are the ones about disarming the lawful.
Jefferson frequently QUOTED Becarria, and owned a copy of his book in the original Italian, as did several other of the Founding Fathers. So much so, that many mistakenly think Jefferson said that quote, and not Becarria.
https://www.zebrafactcheck.com/quote-che...-beccaria/ https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/cg...ticle=2566&context=plr
"II. BECCARIA’S IDEAS WERE KNOWN, DISCUSSED, AND TAKEN SERIOUSLY
BY THE FOUNDERS
Beccaria’s work was widely read in America during the Founding
period.16 As James Madison said, Beccaria hit “the zenith of his fame as a
philosophical legislator” when the American Founders were contemplating
revolution and the new government.17 Not only were many ordinary
American colonists familiar with Beccaria’s writing in the 1760s, 70s, and
80s,18 but the Founders, as members of the educated class, were especially
knowledgeable about his work.19 The first four American presidents all knew of and engaged with his ideas,20 with John Adams using a quote from On
Crimes and Punishments in his closing argument at the Boston Massacre
trials21 and Thomas Jefferson recording no fewer than twenty-six of the book’s
passages for his own reference.22 Outside the presidential circle, Benjamin
Franklin, Charles Lee, Pennsylvania publisher William Bradford, Benjamin
Rush, John Hancock, and Josiah Quincy, Jr. among others, also reported being
influenced by Beccaria’s treatise.23
It would have been unlikely for an educated late eighteenth-century man
with an interest in law and political philosophy to have been unaware of
Beccaria, so firm was his foothold in the world of Enlightenment
scholarship.24 Across the ocean in Europe, William Blackstone was instantly
captivated by Beccaria’s treatise.25 Blackstone cited Beccaria more than any
other source in his 1769 volume of Commentaries on the Laws of England,26
thereby introducing Beccaria’s writing to a wide, new Anglo-American
audience.27 Through Blackstone, Beccaria’s work spread rapidly. Jeremy
Bentham was similarly taken by Beccaria,28 and perhaps his greatest
champion was Voltaire, to whom “no single Enlightenment figure” was more
inspiring.29 Voltaire even wrote a commentary on On Crimes and
Punishments featured in foreign-language editions of the treatise.30 In short, Beccaria was a key part, if not the centerpiece, of the conversation on law and
criminology in Enlightenment circles, including American revolutionary
circles, when the United States was founded."
It keeps going on.
"It is difficult to understand the Framers’ mindset on criminal law while
drafting our founding documents unless one appreciates what they learned
from Beccaria. Beccaria’s ideas were being discussed and debated when the
Continental Congress met; James Madison included On Crimes and
Punishments in a list of recommended reading for the Congress’s members.41
Later, the Pennsylvania Gazette, one of Philadelphia’s most-read newspapers,
published long excerpts of the treatise in the 1780s that many delegates to the
Constitutional Convention would have read.42 One study found that
approximately one out of every thirty citations to major Enlightenment
thinkers during the 1780s, when the Constitution was drafted, was to
Beccaria.43 Therefore, it is little wonder that Madison is considered to have
been “a student of Beccaria” when he drafted the Bill of Rights44 and that,
more generally, the Framers are considered to have been “profoundly
influenced” by Beccaria’s work while crafting the Constitution.45 At every
step during the Founding period, Beccaria’s treatise appeared, offering
guiding principles and substantive ideas that would become codified into
American law."
