Shooting a rabid pit bull before it bites your child is an act of violence. It might be the correct thing to do, still it is violent.
I must say in many ways I would feel more secure at times with a gun. Still it goes against my beliefs so I live without it. The same is true with the teachings of Christ. It gives me a lot a satisfaction to make this type of sacrifice.
I have often wondered how to balance faith and necessity. All I can do is defer to Genesis and the fact that we are masters of the earth. Shooting people is not right but a man is to die as Christ did defending what he loved.
Ephesians 5:
25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
26to make her holy, cleansing
b her by the washing with water through the word,
27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church—
30for we are members of his body.
31“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”
c 32This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.
33However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Am am to lay down my life if necessary to defend my family which is the wife first because she is the mother of the children and they are an extension of us. If I must take up arms I will do that.