A recent discovery. I thought it very relevant with what we are dealing with today:

This 1764 essay by Cesare Beccaria is the source of [the] quote, often misattributed to (but actually quoted by) Thomas Jefferson: “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.”
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Essay … Chapter_XL
brought to my attention by Open Source Defense:
https://opensourcedefense.substack.com/ … the-basics

[...]Dei delitti e delle pene (1764), translated into English as On Crimes and Punishments (1767), significantly shaped the views of American revolutionaries and lawmakers. The first four U.S. Presidents — George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison — were inspired by Beccaria’s treatise and, in some cases, read it in the original Italian. On Crimes and Punishments helped to catalyze the American Revolution, and Beccaria’s anti-death penalty views materially shaped American thought on capital punishment, torture and cruelty. America’s foundational legal documents — the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the U.S. Bill of Rights — were themselves shaped by Beccaria’s treatise and its insistence that laws be in writing and be enforced in a less arbitrary manner…
The Italian Enlightenment and the American Revolution: Cesare Beccaria's Forgotten Influence on American Law
https://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/all_fac/972/