Friday, June 29, 2012

Creating Helpless Victims


Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . .  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
On Crimes and Punishment
Quoted by Thomas Jefferson 
in Commonplace Book

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