The meme thread (please share your memes here)

[HaShev]

 

[Ridgerunner]

 

[K9Buck]

 

[Oddball]

 

[Oddball]

 

[Oddball]

 

[Oddball]

 

[HaShev]

 

[hjmick]

View attachment 297308

Jefferson didn't write this. It's a bad translation of a passage in Cesare Beccaria's Essay on Crimes and Punishments, originally published in Italian in 1764 that Jefferson included in his "Legal Commonplace Book."

It appears in the book:

Falsa idea di utilità è quella, che sacrifica mille vantaggi reali, per un inconveniente o immaginario, o di poca conseguenza, che toglierebbe agli uomini il fuoco perchè incendia, e l'acqua perchè annega; che non ripara ai mali, che col distruggere. Le leggi, che proibiscono di portar le armi, sono leggi di tal natura; esse non disarmano che i non inclinati, nè determinati ai delitti, mentre coloro che hanno il coraggio di poter violare le leggi più sacre della umanità è le più importanti del codice, come rispetteranno le minori, e le puramente arbitrarie? Queste peggiorano la condizione degli assaliti migliorando quella degli assalitori, non iscemano gli omicidi, ma gli accrescono, perchè è maggiore la confidenza nell'assalire i disarmati, che gli armati. Queste si chiaman leggi, non preventrici, ma paurose dei delitti, che nascono dalla tumultuosa impressione di alcuni fatti particolari, non dalla ragionata meditazione degl'inconvenienti, ed avvantaggi di un decreto universale.

A better translation:

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, who 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 laws of this nature are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and arbitrary injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance? Does not the execution of this law deprive the subject of that personal liberty, so dear to mankind and to the wise legislator? and does it not subject the innocent to all the disagreeable circumstances that should only fall on the guilty? It certainly makes the situation of the assaulted worse, and of the assailants better, and rather encourages than prevents murder, as it requires less courage to attack unarmed than armed persons.

 

[K9Buck]

Jefferson didn't write this.

Thanks, but either way, it's sound logic.

 

[hjmick]

Jefferson didn't write this.

Thanks, but either way, it's sound logic.

We may not agree on Trump, but we agree on that.

 

[K9Buck]

 

[Preacher]

I have more on my phone but its a task transferring them I do it sometimes but not a lot. I'll add more if I do send them from my phone to my computer.

 

[Oddball]

 

[norwegen]

 

[Deplorable Yankee]

 

[Deplorable Yankee]

 

[Deplorable Yankee]

 

[Coyote]

 

[dudmuck]