Sure, tough guy, because caliber matters.

There have always been people who are willing to use violence (or the real theat of violence) to collect resources and power. Always. Many of those people throughout history have wielded huge amounts of power over large numbers of people, because most people reject violence. And once violent people have extended their power enough, they don't have to do the violence anymore, because the threat is so deeply ingrained.

So, if someone held a gun to your head and told you to shut the fuck up, you would shut the fuck up, either because you ceded control to the violent person, or because you were dead. Any other result means that it was an empty threat. Violence, or the real threat of violence works. It always works, and the only way to defeat it is greater violence turned on that aggressor.

This is why the people "in charge" are usually horrible, awful, exploitative people. Because being horrible, awful, and exploitative is necessary to concentrate power. The United States is a propsperous nation because Europeans showed up and stole most of a continent from the dwindling number of people who already lived there, after having been mostly killed off by disease, much of the rest being finished off by - wait for it - state-sponsored violence.

Right or wrong, the people who are willing to use violence as a means to their ends succeed.