Sen. Ted Cruz has been a staunch supporter of gun rights for quite some time. Then again, you’re not likely to be a Republican elected from the state of Texas as a whole if you’re anti-gun.

Just ask Beto O’Rourke about that.

However, the good senator is under fire for saying something that is actually pretty true.

Newsweek, for example, titled its story on it: “Ted Cruz Says Violence Is ‘Only’ Solution to Violence, Defends AR-15s”

What did Cruz say that was so horrible? Well…

Reiterating his stance against gun control, Republican Senator Ted Cruz said that the “only” solution to violence is violence.

…

In support of the weapon, Cruz cited the shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in 2017, the deadliest in the state’s history. Nearby resident Stephen Willeford responded to the incident with his own rifle and is credited with helping end the incident which killed 26 people and an unborn child.

“The weapon that Stephen used to stop that was an AR-15,” Cruz said.

The conversation around gun control in the U.S. was reignited in May when an 18-year-old man entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and opened fire with an AR-15, killing 21 students and staff members, and himself. Cruz was among the Republicans to call for enhanced security at schools in response to the incident, including armed guards and fewer entrances.

In response to another audience member who said “violence doesn’t solve violence, Cruz added, “It actually is the only thing that does.”

A lot of people will look at that and be flabbergasted that Cruz would say such a thing, but let’s be honest here. The idea that violence never solves anything is absolute nonsense. Yet, it’s not.

See, it’s pretty clear that Cruz was coming at the discussion from a point of stopping violence in progress, not preventing it from ever happening.

That matters, you see.

While prevention methods can include education, jobs, mental health counseling, and a host of other programs not associated with violence, once a violent act is taking place, it’s too late for all those. At that point, the only thing that will generally stop violence is violence.

If someone is attempting to rape your daughter, are you going to try and talk them down and hope they stop? Or are you going to act violently and make them stop?

Even when violence doesn’t appear to have stopped anything–say, the police talk the bad guy down–violence is still part of the equation. At the very least, the threat of a violent response at least makes the bad guy interested in talking.

So Cruz isn’t entirely wrong, even if Newsweek wants to try and take his comments out of context for their headline.

The truth is that violence isn’t inherently evil or vile. The Holocaust wasn’t ended due to diplomacy. It ended because we shot enough Nazis to liberate the camps. It ended because we visited sufficient violence to end it.

On a more local scale and in more recent history, the shooting at Greenwood Park Mall didn’t end because a private citizen talked nicely to the shooter. It ended because a private citizen shot the SOB before he could kill anyone else.

Some don’t like to hear it, but violence solves plenty.