Fighting fire with fire works in certain situation.

I grew up in eastern Oregon near the Idaho border. The main irrigation canal was less than a mile from our farm and on the other side of the canal was sagebrush and dry grass as far as you could see. When lightning or human carelessness started burning up this dry grassland, farmers would load up shovels and wet burlap bags and go help the BLM crews put out the fire. One of the tools for stopping a fire was a controlled burn in front of the fire to create an area with no fuel. The same technique is used with forest fires.

Fighting violence with violence does not work the same way.

Let’s say Donny is the playground bully at school who picks on Khalil every day after school. After it gets so bad that Khalil goes home with a black eye, Khalil’s dad teaches him how to fight. In about a week Khalil is ready to put Donny in his place and does. It's okay to believe Donny isn’t going to pick on Khalil any more, but the fires of insecurity and aggression in Donny have not been put out. The bully is not reformed. To the contrary, all of Donny’s insecurities that made him a bully to begin with have been amplified. He has been publicly humiliated and now the stakes are higher. He will find new ways to torment more kids and become twice the menace he had been.

Fighting violence with violence has human dynamics such as getting even that fire doesn’t have.