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83 million gun owners last time I saw a decent stat on it and over 240 million guns.

BATFE claims nearly 50% of household have a firearm. About 3 people per household brings it to 1 out of 6 or 15% or about 45 million. Your number of guns may be correct, but it is not germane to the point I was making.

Japan may have a low gun crime rate, but suicide is through the roof.

You're just going to have to explain the significance of that line to... "an armed society is a polite society."

Iraq had millions of AK's laying around, but no basis for individual responsibility ingrained in them and rampant religion/government backed militia's.

Are you an Iraqi whisperer or something? Iraqis have no sense of individual responsibility? Can you site psych studies for me to read on this? Are you saying we are trying to establish law, order and democracy in a land of people "ingrained" with irresponsibility? But, the over-arching point is "who cares?" The original post didn't say "an armed society of people who have responsibility ingrained in them and are not religious or member of a militia, is a polite society."

Still, show me a society where being armed is the cause of it being polite. The Brits are an extraordinarily polite people, but their manners have nothing to do with firearms either in favor or against. Of course they may have an astounding rate of suicide the bearing of which, on this subject I have no clue, but you seem to understand why so I'm adding it for the edification of you and others.

For someone who supposedly has a family steeped in the firearms business, you could damn near write press releases for Josh Sugarman

This is the line I like the most. Yeah, the DNA in my family looks more like rifling than a double helix, yet none of us believe that firearms develop personalities. Why you would compare me, a gun owning, gun toting, card carrying member of the NRA to Sugarman speaks volumes about something, but not me. No rational person could derive that from any of my posts. I'm more of a fan of Dr. Kleck.

Your post neither answers nor addresses my request for a sensible explanation of "An armed society is a polite society." So forgive me if I assume you have no proper response to my inquiry.

Prior to the 1960's, going all the way back to our Countries inception, arms were much more freely carried than today and people were considered much more congenial towards each other than they are today. The only exceptions being western expansion towns, the worst of which incidentally tried imposing arbitrary gun control laws leading the the near legendary antics of places like Tombstone.

Also, it wasn't me who coined Heinlein's words for him, nor was I the one to post them here. If you can't understand the internal logic of being a bit more nice to people who might be equally, or better, armed than you yourself currently happen to be, then there is no hope for you.

My responses to you have more to do with your seeming approval of limitations of an individual Right.

Being such a fan of Dr. Kleck, you should know better than to equate simple gun ownership with violent crime. But still, you keep trying to find traction with some moronic point about how wide spread gun ownership doesn't necessarily lead to a better, more crime free society.

Keep trying though... if your DNA is "rifling", I think your bore may be shot out.