I recently read the beginning chapters of 3rd Nephi in the Book of Mormon, and the lack of context really struck me, especially concerning chapter 3 and the letters exchanged by Giddianhi and Lachoneus. I think if there were more records pertaining to this conflict, that the whole thing would look less like a battle between the good guys and bad guys, and more like a civil war between political factions.
From a certain perspective, the Gadhianton robbers could be seen as the disenfranchised lower classes. They've been chased away from the rest of society and must live like beasts in the mountains. And when the natural elements force them out of the mountains, they try to survive off the produce of the agrarian society with a surplus of goods. Yet the 'civilized' people claim that these outcasts are robbing them, conflict happens and the cry of 'murder' is raised. And why do the numbers of these 'robbers' keep growing? Why would someone choose to forsake society and live as a hunter/gatherer in the wilderness? Maybe that situation looks better than their current prospects; I think it likely that most of the 'robbers' were the poor and disenfranchised and they took up arms in protest because they had nothing to lose.
And the fact that the law code was revised after the civil war was over is evidence in my mind that there really were legitimate grievances and the legal revisions were made to assuage any further political dissensions that might arise. This only acted as a stopgap though, because the government was overthrown just a few years later. I don't think such a drastic revolution would have occurred if the political and social situation were beyond reproach.
This just goes to show how much the Book of Mormon is a religious text, and not a historical one. It doesn't show an unbiased history of events, but instead highlights certain events as a method of teaching certain moral lessons.
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