My whole life, I have been of two minds on this. As a committed capitalist, working now lately in private security, degreed (finally) in something and having chosen criminology, I know from personal experience and education that weaponry is not necessary to peace.  Yet, my confirmation bias cannot argue away the fact that the world is a dangerous place; and humans are the most rapacious and unpredictable predators.  Few animals – the wolverine, perhaps – attack without provocation, but humans are among them.  We do not kill to eat, but kill for sport including the blood sport of politics.  How many houses or schools would not be built, how many mortarboards would have been forgone if the democracies had not resisted first the nazis and then the communists.  Even Switzerland endures because its men have state-issued guns.  Within the borders of democracies are those who would use force to gain their agendas and who actively do so in direct conflict with the police.  Bad ideas are as prevalent as good.Science and the marketplace may be the invented ecosystems of urbanity that force adaptive change to leave behind violence. Ford and GM have lived as neighbors for over a century, both with armies of guards, neither invading the other.  When Einstein rejected God’s dice, fanatical followers did not blow themselves in Bierstuben frequented by Heisenbergers. But the same can be said for Jesuits, Dominicans, Carmelites, and Ursulines, or the many sects of Buddhism.  Unfortunately, religion was not so helpful to Ireland or Palestine or India.  And communism has been called “the god that failed” though it failed to those who still trust in God — and His military hardware, apparently…So, the problem seems complex.