Is an armed society more polite?
Some people like to quote Heinlein saying that “an armed society is a polite society”. The corrolary is supposed to be that encouraging citizens to bear arms might make them more polite, responsible, etc.
It occurred to me that this might be a testable hypothesis.
Suppose we took a control group of random citizens, gave them lethal weapons, and observed whether they became more polite, or less, or stayed the same.
In fact, we do this experiment every day when people drive automobiles that are capable of killing more people more quickly than a small to medium gun. I think people actually become less polite, quicker to anger, more likely to see malice in the actions of other drivers, etc. (See for example AAMI crash index 2003.)
(I don't really think this proves anything about guns. It just amused me. I can think of plenty of caveats in either direction.)
posted Sun 18 Apr 2004 in /issues/guns | link
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