Thought of the day: Revisiting Heinlein

[unixronin]

Robert Anson Heinlein said, “An armed society is a polite society.”

This assertion has been widely disputed by many, and perhaps justly so.  Those who disagree raise such examples as Somalia, Zaire, Rwanda, or Ulster during the Troubles, none of which are what Heinlein would have considered “polite societies”.

The validity of this counter-argument cannot be disputed.  Their applicability is another matter; but I have realized that the fault of applicability lies in a failure to adequately specify the terms.

You see, the examples above — or any of many others, such as Cambodia or Kosovo — really are not what Heinlein had in mind.  In all the places we’ve named as counter-examples, a largely or completely unarmed population live, or lived, under the rule or threat of a much smaller minority of violent, heavily-armed, often homicidal thugs. The thugs, possessed of a nearly absolute monopoly on the use of lethal force, used it freely whenever the whim took them ... exactly the situation Heinlein was envisioning would not happen in an armed society.

But Heinlein made an important implicit assumption, which he felt was too obvious to need to be explicitly spelled out.  When one reads his writings, it’s clear that when he said “an armed society”, what he meant was “a uniformly armed society.”  And that one word makes all the difference.

You see, one violent thug — in Somalia, or Zaire, or wherever — with an automatic weapon can intimidate a crowd of forty or fifty unarmed people most of the time, because nobody wants to be among the first ten or a dozen who die before his weapon runs dry or he gets overpowered.  But if twenty, or ten, or five of those people are also armed ... well, that dramatically changed the odds, and not in the thug’s favor.  And the thug knows it.

That same armed thug, in a city full of unarmed people, can mug ten or a dozen people a day with impunity, and get away with it unless caught by the police.  As long as he chooses his times and places, and robs when the police aren’t there, he’s pretty safe.  But if one in ten of those people is armed, then roughly once per day he’s going to try to rob someone who’s armed, and the odds are good that within a few days at most, one of them is going to kill him.  That’s not nearly so enticing a prospect.

This is the crucial factor:  In a uniformly armed society, the violent thugs do not have the effective monopoly on force that makes their way of life sustainable.  And that’s what makes a society polite — when its violent thugs have to realize that they cannot live in it as violent thugs, but are going to have to either play by the rules, die, or find somewhere else to live.

So let’s slightly restate Heinlein:

“A uniformly armed society is a polite society.”

Comments

[rob-thompson.livejournal.com]

A really good example, and I believe RAH had this in mind when he made the comment, was the Western USA post-Civil War and pre-WW1. That was a society that was generally armed and more or less, polite and civil. Stripping out the romanticism of the time, which can be difficult, the types of crime committed were either minor or major - there didn't seem to be much of an in between. I believe it was Louis L'Amour who made the point that small Western towns were not regularly overrun by gun-toting thugs because the populace themselves were armed and not afraid to take action. As for it being MAD writ small, I would respectfully disagree. MAD implies an equal standoff - equal capabilities, whereas the "polite" society didn't assume that. Quite the opposite. Being a good shot, maybe even the best shot, didn't absolve you from participating correctly. You were polite because, if nothing else, there's always going to be someone who's better than you. Unless of course you'll shoot an opponent wearing a brassard; which is a quick trip to the gallows. I think Alaric nailed it with the addition of uniformly armed society...then again, when RAH made the comments - the weapons restrictions currently in place in Canada and the US were unthinkable except in places like the USSR.

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

the Western USA post-Civil War and pre-WW1. That was a society that was generally armed and more or less, polite and civil.

I haven't found a good online source for hard data about 19th century crime rates, but sources such as this one (http://books.google.com/books?id=stByuqF51GsC&pg=PA78&lpg=PA78&dq=post+civil+war+crime+rate&source=bl&ots=AtAZKCb_Xu&sig=S6uKQkhXiKTNGkoVTtRGs-HbkV4&hl=en&ei=U8HeSbbUIM_fnQfvmqWvCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#PPA81,M1) speak of a sharp rise in violent crime following the Civil War.

Data kept by the US Bureau of Justice Statistics suggests that a dip in the crime rate at the turn of the last century was followed by an astounding rise in the years leading up to WWI. The homicide rate in 1916 was higher than it is today. (Graphically illustrated here (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/hmrt.htm), numbers here (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/hmrttab.htm).)

Remember, not many Americans actually lived in those small Western towns. America was becoming increasingly urban. Gangs formed, such as the infamously violent Irish gangs of New York. In rural areas there were sheet-wearing gangs. Railroads gave thieves and con-men mobility.

I suspect that if we were able to cross-reference the numbers properly, violent crime rates would show much more of a correlation with demographics and economic indexes than anything else.

The majority of criminals are, and always have been, males roughly between the ages of 15 and 30. When there are many of them in comparison to the general population, and they don't have plenty of work to keep them busy, the crime rates go up.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yup. Can't dispute any of that. I've heard a lot of the post-Civil War spike attributed to soldiers with nothing left to go home to.

And, frankly, I'm not going to be in the least surprised if crime rates start going up as this recession/depression deepens — which pretty much all the people who actually understand the problem say it's going to continue to do for a while yet before it gets better. Commercial real estate is as overleveraged as residential, and it hasn't even started to crash ... yet. But that domino is going to start going over any time now, as leases come due from businesses and companies that have gone under.

[rob-thompson.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting the sources. Unfortunately, if you examine them, they're not quite what we need for this discussion. The statistics provided by the Department of Justice aren't broken out...there's no way of telling just where the incidents are happening. As for Dr. Markonnen's book - well, that too is rather suspect. He writes in the book that the spike in crime is due to the ex-Civil War soldiers returning to their homes, morally deranged by the military, unable to hold jobs, unable to operate outside the morally/ethically corrupt military. But...he then goes on to write a book saying that returning soldiers were salt of the earth, well-disciplined and looking only to resume their interrupted lives and move on - which is why they weren't criminals. Like many academics, he's trying to suck and blow at the same time. Doesn't work. I'm a Canadian, so our frontier experience is slightly different than yours and my study of the frontier has been more on the interaction between Canada/UK/US during time of American Revolution. I was offering an opinion, which I still stand by, that the armed Western frontier was generally a safer place for law abiding citizens than a place like New York or Boston of the time. Can I truly prove it...doubtful. I suspect there's a middle ground between my opinion and that of the people who want a disarmed citizenry - I just don't know how to find it.