“You can buy a grenade for $15 or brass knuckles for $5,” he said. “We had a guy showing off a gun in school yesterday. He said if we told on him, we’d be killed. It’s gotten worse over the last couple of days. Before the war you could kid around with people. Now you know not to be rude or get angry with anyone.”
— Amel Efendic, age 15, quoted in “Sarajevo Streets are Humming Happily Again,” by Kit R. Roane, The New York Times, October 2, 1995, page A3 (emphasis added).
I’m finding all sorts of goodies as I unpack my library in the garage. This was an article I stuffed away with the note that it’s rare to find real-world examples of Heinlein’s famous dictum, “an armed society is a polite society.” But there it is, in black & white.
Well, actually it’s black print, but aged yellow paper. I should have used a Mylar bag.