Rory Miller: Sometimes Violence is the Only Answer

Rory Miller: Sometimes Violence is the Only Answer

“It’s often been said ‘violence never solved anything.’ The simple truth is that when you are slammed up against the wall and the knife is at your throat, when a circle of teenagers is kicking you as you curl into a ball on the sidewalk, or when the man walks into your office building or school with a pair of guns and starts shooting, only violence or the reasonable threat of violence is going to save your life. In the extreme moment, only force can stop force.

“‘Violence never solved anything.’ This platitude is so patently and obviously false that it takes some pretty special mental gymnastics to say it, much less believe it. The fact is that some things, especially dangerous things happening very fast, can ONLY be solved by violence.” – Rory Miller, martial artist, instructor, and author, Violence: A Writer’s Guide.

Check his work out at chirontraining.com. His books are on Amazon – and his books rock. Force-on-force should be part of every gun owner’s training.

 

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63 COMMENTS

  1. “My mother said violence never solves anything.” “So?” Mr. Dubois looked at her bleakly. “I’m sure the city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that.”

      • Violence never solves anything. This is true but we use violence to stop things not solve them.

        Solving comes after the dust of violence has settled.

        • Wrong. Violence killing criminals results in less criminals and less crime. Try again with your cute pseudo wisdom.

        • The fantasies of naive children.

          Violence solves all sorts of problems, primarily by permanently eliminating the people who cause them.

          Feel free to crack a history book, or 50.

        • Unfortunately, if you study the course of history violence solves most problems. In fact nature itself is ruled by the law of violence. I prefer non violent resolution but am not naive to think that violence does not settle most matters.

        • Might want to look at “specific deterrence”. Specific application is a solution to many problems.

        • Righteous violence is a wonderful and necessary act. I’m so grateful I can kill a rapist dead. Or a child molester. I’m glad if I have to, since the police are just minutes away, I can kill the person who tries to murder my wife or my daughter.

          Or when a tyrannical government simply stops using police and allows the modern KKK, who now wave red Hammer and sickle Flags, and wear black masks, to direct traffic in places like Portland Oregon.

        • Most problems can be solved peacefully. All problems can be solved with violence. There, I fixed it for you.

    • Heinlein said it better, and I believe earlier, in this passage:

      “Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and — thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never solves anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler would referee. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor; and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms.”

  2. “never really deals with the basic evil of the situation. may murder the murderer, but it doesn’t murder murder. may murder the liar, but it doesn’t murder lie; it doesn’t establish truth. may even murder the dishonest man, but it doesn’t murder dishonesty. may go to the point of murdering the hater, but it doesn’t murder hate. It may increase hate. It is always a descending spiral leading nowhere. This is the ultimate weakness of: It multiplies evil and in the universe. It doesn’t solve any problems.”

    • Violence will not prevent crime from ever happening, but it can prevent a crime from being committed upon my person or upon someone else’s. If you don’t think fighting fire with fire works, google “backfire” and learn its application in fire fighting.

      • Swift and just punishment for crime is the best way to dissuade crime. It will not stop all crime, but it will definitely lower the stats.

    • Does it occur to you that lieing, stealing and murder are part of our baser selves? That the nature of man is to default to his wants and attempt to justify or get away with his actions? We can never be free of all our failings but we can enact a society that limits them.

    • If a good man kills an evil one out of necessity or stops an evil act by using violence, that act does not magically introduce any evil to the world. It demonstrably reduces evil. To think otherwise is backward and insane. But insanity is necessary in the Kafkaesque world of postmodernism.

    • “Violence never really deals with the basic evil of the situation. Violence may murder the murderer, but it doesn’t murder murder. Violence may murder the liar, but it doesn’t murder lie; it doesn’t establish truth. Violence may even murder the dishonest man, but it doesn’t murder dishonesty. Violence may go to the point of murdering the hater, but it doesn’t murder hate. It may increase hate. It is always a descending spiral leading nowhere. This is the ultimate weakness of violence: It multiplies evil and violence in the universe. It doesn’t solve any problems.”
      ― Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

    • It indeed does, establish truth. Your self delusional platitudes are the reason violence has to be used. You ignore the warfare that occurs in your backyard everyday. The law of the jungle dictates survivability. Violence is not a downward spiral, it’s an uplifting evolutionary tool.

  3. Violence is often employed successfully to solve two problems.

    “How do we subjugate them over there?”

    And

    “How do we not be subjugated?”

    But POTG aren’t the ones who need to be told this.

    • There’s a car I always see in the parking lot at work that has three bumper stickers. From right to left, they read:
      1, FREE HAWAII;
      2, WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER;
      3, TREES ARE THE ANSWER.

      So…trees will free Hawaii? And free Hawaii from what, I wonder…the intolerable prosperity that comes with being part of the USA?

      American progressives: Providing stupid answers to the wrong questions since 1908.

  5. True “courage under fire” is a concept that is sadly lacking in today’s society. Most people live their lives out as decent human beings without coming into contact with those who would do them harm, and as such, have no idea of what it is like to have to act “on principle”, and do things “out of the ordinary” that serve to preserve innocent life, even at the expense of the courageous.

    “Courage under fire” is an interesting concept that most people do not understand, and is not limited to military actions, but occurs in everyday life. Most people who exhibit courage under fire are ordinary, mild-mannered, non-violent individuals who have been propelled (actually thrust) into a situation that requires immediate action. Examples include Medal of Honor recipients, those exposed to combat, and yes, those civilians who give their lives to protect our children in our abominable and misguided “gun free zones” called “schools”.

    Let’s look at comparisons between our military and veterans who DO exhibit “courage under fire” as a matter of course, and our civilian (but “quasi-military”) “law enforcement” (who should exhibit the same characteristics but, in general, do not), but have become more and more removed from this concept of “courage under fire”. You see, in today’s “law enforcement” community, “officer safety” is paramount. Most ordinary line officers will wait for a SWAT team, even on routine assignments, where even the SWAT teams exhibits a degree of caution that results in innocent lives being lost. It appears that the only time police and SWAT teams act with impunity is when they KNOW that they are relatively safe, as in their invasions on individual residences. In today’s “law enforcement” community, “making it to retirement” is the goal. When it comes to police officers, putting one’s life in peril “for the greater good” is absolutely “out of the question”. Unlike our military and veterans, today’s “law enforcement” runs away from gunfire or “waits it out”. Not good.

    A good examples of this is the latest school mass shooting in which the well-equipped police and SWAT teams SAT ON THEIR HANDS while the carnage was taking place. It most certainly appears that “courage under fire” is an unknown concept in American “law enforcement”. We are being told that this concept of “waiting to act” was abandoned after Columbine, but one can easily see that this is not the case, with the latest blatant example being the most recent school mass shooting, where “law enforcement” hesitated to act.

    • So well said. The exception being a mob of LEO’S chasing down an individual & tazing them . beating them with clubs , stomping them , causing such harm as to hospitilize them. Gang mentality is what it is , in these situations. Often a so called ” criminal ” is the victim in these situations. Guilty until proven innocent.

  6. “With righteousness HE doth judge and make WAR”…sometimes violence IS the answer.

  7. “violence never solved anything”

    depends on what you are trying to solve.

    Does violence STOP all war? No. Does it stop a particular war on the ones being attacked? More likely than doing nothing. Does violence stop STOP all crime? No. But it sure puts a crimp in the day of the guy trying to rob you at a gas station. On a micro level, violence solves a LOT of problems. On a macro level, those problems are solved one thug at a time.

    Doing nothing absolutely solves nothing.

  8. The late, great American Patriot and SEAL Chris Kyle had as a motto for his security company, Craft: “Violence does solve problems”. (It’s on my hat). I’d even expand and say that “violence can solve all problems”.

  9. I certainly believe that a few A-10 strafing runs on a certain caravan column of immigrants invaders, would go a long way to providing an answer to the rest of the world on where Americans stand on invasion.

    • Sure. Killing a whole bunch of helpless women and children is going to go over really well.

      What we need to do is kill the people who are responsible for organizing the caravan in the first place. After arresting them for treason, if they’re US citizens.

      • Since many in the caravan are ARMED, and some have proven to have bombs, and several others are running from the law in their home countries, the A-10’s might be the best answer because they must be stopped before they breach our borders. Make no mistake, it IS an INVASION, which is defined as illegal entry with intent to STAY, as opposed to an INCURSION, which is a reasonably quick in and out raid. Since the 14th Amendment does NOT support the Perversion the Dems call “Birthright Citizenship” in any way shape or form there is NO reason for these raiders to cross into America.

  10. Adolph Hitler was a problem. We solved it, with violence.
    Emperor Hirohito was a problem. We solved it, with violence.
    Saddam Husein was a problem. We solved it, with violence.
    Osama Bin Laden was a problem. We solved it, with violence.

    Indeed, violence solves problems. Evil people such as those mentioned will continue to rise to power, and we will continue to deal with them through the only effective means. Violence.

  11. Violence never solved anything… except:

    * The Battle of Marathon
    * The Battle of Leuctra
    * The Battle of Cannae
    * The Battle of Actium
    * The Battle of Teutoborg Forest
    * The Battle of Stamford Bridge
    * The Battle of Mohacs
    * The Battle of Poitiers
    * The Battle of Agincourt
    * The Battle of Crecy
    * The Battle of Sekigahara
    * The Thirty Years War
    * The English Civil War
    * The Boshin War
    * The Seven Years War
    * The French and Indian War
    * The American Revolution
    * The War of 1812
    * The War for Mexican Independence
    * The War for Texas Independence
    * The Mexican War
    * The Taiping Rebellion
    * The Crimean War
    * The American Civil War
    * The Franco-Prussian War
    * The First Sino-Japanese War
    * The Spanish-American War
    * The Boxer Rebellion
    * The Russo-Japanese War
    * The Italo-Turkish War
    * WWI
    * The Gran Chaco War
    * WWII
    * The Russian Revolution
    * The Gunfight at the OK Corral
    * The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

    Other than those (and a few THOUSAND more), violence never solves ANYTHING…

    • And I’d add, violence will be the solution to the inevitable and imminent “War of Leftist Aggression”. Coming soon, to a city near you.

      • Apparently these nitwits have never heard the name “Rosa Luxemburg”.

        They might want to ask themselves how the “revolution” worked out for HER…

        • As a Communist provocateur and agitator seeking to overthrow the government I’m not surprised it didn’t work out well for her.

          May it be so for today’s Communist agitators…

  12. There are times and situations where violence becomes the only solution to a problem. That fact is proved time and again in History and everyday life. We’re only talking about this for entertainment purposes, apparently, but I cannot be sure WHO is supposedly being entertained….

  13. How about “The pen is mightier than the sword.”?

    Bullshit. The pen is only mightier than the sword if you can use it to enlist the services of someone with a sword. Or, many swordsmen. Otherwise, it just a pen.

  14. Violence solved the problem of Nazis murdering millions of people in concentration camps.
    That was a noble use of violence for a greater good.

  15. I honestly hope that I never have to use violence again against another human being so long as I live. But, that does not mean that I’m not capable, if need arises, to do violence. I just hope I don’t have to.

  17. Reason … sanctions…. preparation..are all tools against violence. However our ability to respond with force remains the best deterrent against evil.

  19. Klamath Falls Herald and News: Sunday, April 8th, 2018/Letters To The Editor

    There are times that violence is essential

    Responding to Warren Frei’s April 1 letter: “Violence in any form, should not be tolerated.” Really now?

    In his 2016 book former U.S. Army Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman (who likewise authored “On Killing”) states: “Our enemy is denial. Denial is a great big blanket we pull up over our heads so we can pretend the bad man will never come. Denial kills us twice. It kills us physically when violence catches us unprepared, and it kills us psychologically when we know that we could have prevented the violence and failed to do so.”

    Like Warren Frei’s letter I rightly detest the pop “usually taken out of context” religious cliche: “God Is In Control.” This is another form of denial. Scenario: It’s 2 or 3 A.M. early pre-dawn darkness. The house, apartment, or condo dweller is instantly awaken by the sound of forced entry and breaking glass. But because “God Is In Control” the person in bed can roll back over, go to sleep, and not worry.

    The prudent prepared homeowner via armed homeland security would grab a loaded .38 caliber revolver from the nighy-stand, dresser, or bureau drawer, thus confronting, and shooting to kill if necessary, the nocturnal predator who breached the premises.

    Yes God himself eventually is in control: of nature, the universe, laws of science, physics etc. But religious and political denial gets people killed! April 19, 1943, commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Poland during World War II (1939-1945).

    A small group of Jews, Poles, and resistant fighters united rising up against the murderous Nazi SS, thus fighting to the death. The alternative: deportation to Treblinka, Poland by railroad box cars and cattle cars, and certain death!

    “Blessed be the Lord my God, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.” —Psalms 144:1

    James A. Farmer

    Merrill

  22. “You are a coward.”
    “No, I’m a pacifist!”
    “So a coward who pat’s himself on the back.”

  24. Any problem on Earth can be solved with the careful application of high explosives. The trick is not to be around when they go off.

    COLONEL MERTZ VON QUIRNHEIM, Valkyrie (2008)

  25. Try saying that to the person trying to take your life. If violence is coming at you and you stand by the saying that violence never solved anything, then you are dead. I can’t guarantee that you will survive but at least you tried. End of discussion.

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