When is violence acceptable?

my greatest recommendation to you would be – Move. Clearly they arent going to be kicked out, or charged – how some ppl get away with that is beyond me. You may have been able to use him hitting you as leverage, but not after beating him (but I can relate to not being able to stop yourself) self defence would have been pushing him back, not out right beating him – so my suggestion to you – is move. Some people never stop so just get away from it and get a good nights sleep

I was gonna say self defense…
Man, that situation is really not cool. I probably would have just called the police.

Would you say that your response was ‘self-defense’? If your response was teach him a lesson, rather than just preventing further attacks, then you are probably not legally in the right.

I agree with with @AllyMay that you would be in a better position to stop the long-term problem if you’d have simply called the police after he hit you.

On the other hand, my first reaction was to cheer you.

No, you were not in the right. You’ve talked to them, and they’ve been unreasonable. The solution (assuming you don’t want to move) is to call the police every single time they fight and you hear it. You won’t be able to do anything useful unless you have a paper trail, and when the police realize they’re being called to the same apartment every night for a domestic violence complaint, they’ll do something about it.

Self-defense is the force you use to prevent yourself from getting hurt or to minimize your own injury. The minute you used force not to prevent him from hitting you, but to “kick the sh*& out of him,” you were in the wrong.

If you’re attacked with a stick, I think you have a right to defend yourself, and that could easily include subduing your attacker. After all, if you don’t, they might come back again.

So, after subduing your attacker, you call the cops, and press charges. You explain, honestly, what happened. Who knows, they might even thank you for giving this jerk the beating they could not give him.

I also agree with cwilbur that if you went futher than subduing, onto the land of punishment, then you have a problem. Of course, depending on what the wife says, you’d get into a “he said, she said” situation, which doesn’t end satisfactorily for anyone. You may need to move, if you value your sleep.

it wasn’t using excesive force, no one was bleeding when I left I only hit him 4 or 5 mabie 6 times(not hard enough for any real damage), only hard enough to make my point(don’t attack someone with a weapon), his wife was crying somewhere the apt(she didn’t see me, even if she did I’m not worried about legal issues caused by this) I doubt he even remembers it, a the idea of calling the police didn’t occure me until after(I didn’t go up there fight, I was still half asleep and wanted the just to quiet down)

You have a right to defend yourself, and the drunk man did come at you with a stick. However you put yourself in that situation knowing full well that he’s a violent man who drinks, so my final thought is that while your violence was acceptable, use your brain next time and don’t put yourself in a violent situation wielding politeness and extreme nicety against a drunken violent man. In all cases involving apartment annoyances, the easiest, quickest, most drama free way to solve it is to find a new place to live if you can, and this is true in this case too.

If you’re attacked with a weapon of any kind, you always have the right to defend yourself and it is human nature to do so. (Unless somebody is a total pacifist maybe). Additionally, if you are attacked by someone who is inebriated, the person who is assaulting you is probably not thinking clearly in the first place and this can just compound the situation even more.

In a situation like yours, you should call the police and have them intervene in the constant domestic altercations that are occurring above your apartment. That is the best and safest answer.

As far as when violence is acceptable, in my opinion?

- Self-defense
– in controlled enviroments such as boxing and cage fighting (if you like that sort of thing – I don’t)
– during war (although it’s not really acceptable, it’s inevitable)

Where do you think you are? This fluther home of the self-righteous. They’re all gonna say violence is never then answer and you’re a bad person.

I’ve never been so overwhelmed as to just “have to” beat somebody. Once he hit you, you should have called the police and pressed charges. You’d be amazed at how many wife beaters don’t go to jail until a 3rd party becomes involved. Also, it’s never a good idea to confront an abuser while a situationis occuring. More often than not, you’ll be the one who gets hurt, and the abusee is unlikely to testify against the abuser.

Don’t feel bad. Sounds like that fool got the beating he deserved! He will think twice before messing with you again and the wife will probably get a worse beating. Don’t feel bad for that either because she could leave the loser. The best way to stop this would be to go and talk to the super face to face and keep going up the ladder until someone does something. I had a problem with a neighbor leaving trash on his porch (got up to about 8–10 bags) and the way it stopped was to work my way up the ladder.

i think you were right because you were more-or-less defending yourself.
that sounds crazy though dude, i hope they get kicked out/leave soon.
i don’t think violence is acceptable whatsoever (except in cartoons!) unless it’s in defense against other violence…

I would beat someones ass if they hit me with a stick. Tell him if he keeps being loud he may get it again.

I am going off topic, but you said the guy probably won’t remember because he was drunk, and it reminded me of a great (at least I thought) story that a friend shared with me.

This guy’s grandfather would come home drunk nightly. He would be loud, obnoxious, mean to his wife, and was an overall terrible drunk. The grandmother would wait until her old man would pass out and then she would crack him a couple times over the head with a cast iron skillet. He would wake up in the morning with dried blood all over his face and his wife would tell him he should really stop going out to drink and pick fights. She stayed married to him until he died, and never spoke I’ll of him or his drinking, she just kept beating his stupid drunk self.

*ill

they were quiet last night that’s a plus