Tao te Ching: 57

Govern the state with correctness.
Operate the army with surprise tactics.
Administer the empire by engaging in no activity.
How do I know that this should be so?
Through this:

The more taboos and prohibitions there are in the world,
   The poorer the people will be.
The more sharp weapons the people have,
   The more troubled the state will be.
The more cunning and skill man possesses,
   The more vicious things will appear.
The more laws and orders are made prominent,
   The more thieves and robbers there will be.

Therefore the sage says:

I take no action and the people of themselves are transformed.
I love tranquility and the people of themselves become correct.
I engage in no activity and the people of themselves become prosperous.
I have no desires and the people of themselves become simple.

Again, Lao Tzu takes us back to the ideal way to govern: laissez-government. Why is it ideal? Because of the principle of wu-wei. It's an elaboration on what he meant in Chapter 48 (when I got derailed by the whole not-learning thing that keeps me from being a Taoist).

The more rules there are, the poorer people will be. How is that so? At first I thought it was simply by limiting their actions. If there are proscriptions against commercial fishing at a certain time of year, that makes the people poorer. Which is true in the short term. But this presupposes something interesting. Lao Tzu is describing an ideal state where everyone has a sense of responsibility. There's no guarantee that people will leave enough fish to spawn a new generation of fish for next year's crop.

Except that it's been done that way for thousands of years. We hear a lot about the depletion of wild populations of fish and think overfishing is to blame. Ok, partly it is. There are some corporations out there without a sense of balance. But mostly it's that the demand is so high that the entire society, from consumers to fishermen to the companies, that everyone wants a little piece of the money or the fish.

That is where we become poorer. All the regulations in place allow people to game the system and conjure money from nowhere. People are getting paid for doing nothing but manipulating the rules in arbitrary ways. Without the rules, that's not possible. It leaves it in the hands of the market, which though crooked, is a much better game than the Byzantine system of taboos and prohibitions. So the more rules there are, the more people will try to scam the system to "get theirs". It encourages the entitlement mentality.

So, is an armed society a polite society? Maybe. I'm willing to bed it's far less about the sword or firearm than it is about the discipline needed to use the thing. There are other ways to acquire that discipline though. Ultimately, I suspect it's not about the actual weaponry and that it's just a convenient handle for Lao Tzu. We're familiar with people assuming power over other people by virtue of carrying a weapon. Have you ever been in a store while it was robbed or slowed down when driving by a police officer, even if you were already at or under the speed limit? The cowing of the populace through the threat of violence and assumption of power is what troubles the state. The cunning and vicious often use these weapons to attain exactly that power. That's the core of every terrorist or freedom fighting group. It doesn't matter if your cause is just or not, you're still pitting yourself against others with power and authority you've taken from those around you by virtue of violence.

Lao Tzu's solution is to just not do these things. Take way the tools that lead to these behaviors.