The historian Peter Spierenburg has provocatively suggested that 'democracy came too early' to America. In Europe, first the state disarmed the people and claimed a monopoly on violence, then the people took over the apparatus of the state, in America, the people took over the state before it had forced them to lay down their arms.
S. Pinker, The better angels of our nature (2011), 118
Elsewhere, in support of this thesis (which I suspect is true) Pinker highlights the differential rates of violent crime by regions of the US, where the North East looks a lot like Europe and the West and South, less so.
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