| Consider someone serving as a paymaster or even an infantryman but during peacetime vs. someone who serves during times of war. I'd think the former hardly placed their lives on the line compared to the latter. And what about the law enforcement services? Do peace officers -- who could face danger every day, whether during times of peace or war -- not qualify for a franchise?
I've found that Heinlein's ideas are usually very sound at a high level, but often don't bear really close scrutiny. I take all of his ideas as a kind of gestalt as opposed to specific wisdom found within his axioms.
One of his most famous lines is "an armed society is a polite society." Tell that to John Wesley Hardin and John "Doc" Holliday during the period of the Wild West. | 
