Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
What's the saying? An armed population is a polite population.
That's a saying all right. Not a very accurate one though or else "inner city gang member" would be synonymous with "perfect gentlemen" rather than a phrase from news stories starting with "another gang-related murder took place..."
First off, inner city gang members rarely live in an environment where the population is armed. Arguably, the worst gang violence occurs in cities with the most strict gun control laws (how's that murder rate in Chicago going btw?).
Secondly, politeness and violence are two different things. The point of the quote isn't to say that an armed population will be a non-violent one, but that when everyone around you is armed, you're less likely to be impolite to people or to escalate disagreements to the point of violence for no reason. It's a comment on more of the "griefer" form of impoliteness. The guy who does things to annoy people around him specifically because he knows that it annoys them and "what are they going to do about it" is his mantra. Well, when the answer is "shoot your annoying self in the head", he's less likely to behave that way.
I'm not saying I agree 100% with the idea, but that is the concept behind the quote. And while I'm also not a fan of the "be nice or else" implication, we do commonly refer to the need for a special level of hell for people who talk in the theater, so there's that angle as well.