[mvpel]

Can a modern society function without a uniformed police force? As bad as the current system is, it is probably better than having the Crips, the Bloods, and various other gangs controlling the streets of major cities.

The only places they would have the ability to do this is where the law-abiding citizens are disarmed and defenseless by force of law.

[Wallace T.]

One man is no match for an organized gang. Gangsters were able to intimidate businessmen even in the early 1900s when access to firearms was as east as to hand tools. (In fact, may hardware stores sold rifles and pistols before the 1980s.) During periods of breakdown of law and order, such as in the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992, the Korean storeowners were able to protect their businesses from looting and burning by forming a de facto armed militia. Though now denounced as vigilantism, the common practice before the 20th Century was for citizens threatened by bandits, Indian raiders, etc., to organize armed posses to protect their homes and businesses and later to confront and subjugate the outlaws. The virtually dead concept of a citizen's arrest stems from the concept that the citizen had a right, even a duty, to protect the community from wrongdoers.