By Paul Weiser
Robert A. Heinlein observed that an armed society is a polite society. Today we find societies - such as urban England's and inner-city America's - where politeness is not merely absent, but something like the opposite has replaced it. Heinlein may, nevertheless, have held the key.
We need hardly analyze the basic statement: where all men are armed, they behave respectfully toward each other to avoid fatal consequences. This is a bit cynical (good manners derive from fear rather than morals) and by no means precludes violence - pistols at dawn or rapiers unsheathed after offense is given and taken, the formalities observed. But formalities underlie civilization: among other things, they make up law.
The exact contrapositive of Heinlein's dictum, "An unarmed society is an impolite society," is trivially true to human nature (a gathering of completely unarmed men will fall to fighting for dominance, and to maintain the pecking order which results). But today's pandemic violence goes beyond that; it is better predicted by, "A disarmed society is a yob society," for violent British thugs and American ghetto trash scarcely lack knives, bottles, steel-toed boots or even firearms.
The key distinction is that these subcultures (a better word would be infra-cultures) are legally disarmed, where their forebears weren't. Their domestic, bar and street violence is thus a constant assault on norms of the polite (armed) previous or supra-culture whose modern means of transportation and communication prevent even the unarmed tribe's dominance pyramid from stabilizing. Everyone goes downtown to the pub, and then it's "'E looked a me bird" or "He dissed me," and out come the knives.
The solution is not to formally re-arm the infra- cultures: it's too late, they must be expunged. The point is that we must never again make the mistake of disarming a polite society.
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