Lay down

The police urged the gunman to lay down his weapon.

Lay down your arms.

Two standard types of flat-bottom track were introduced as early as 1949, and some 1,570 miles had been laid down to the end of 1950.

He also thought nothing of laying down a railway in a war zone. For example, he was one of those behind the Grand Crimean Central Railway, built during the Crimean War [...].

He laid down his brand-new Harley-Davidson to avoid the oncoming bus.

Let's lay down the rules right at the beginning, so we are consistent.

You've got to lay down the law with that boy.

Well, I lay it down, first, that a book quite unornamented can look actually and positively beautiful, and not merely un-ugly, if it be, so to say, architecturally good, which, by the by, need not add much to its price […]

Many of the faults reported in all categories should have been cleared by systematic fault-finding. Once a system of fault-finding has been laid down, staff must be made familiar with it and must follow the correct sequence of diagnosis step by step in the way set out in a fault-finding chart.

To come up with common, honorable, flexible, sensible, creative, meaningful, non-coercive "codes" or expectations of ethical behavior while avoiding laying down hard-line, guilt-inspiring "politically correct" rules and superficial judgements is no small feat.