I should temper that statement. BTW, I'm new to this forum, but I'm also a practicing, believing Mormon. I live in Iowa (about 50 miles from Nauvoo, Illinois). I have a Ph.D. in marriage and family therapy and I am the leader of the High Priest group in my congregation. I'm married with 4 kids, I was raised in Utah by a devout family, and I my ancestors have been members of the church since the 1830s (going back to the Kirtland years). So those are my credentials (or my biases, depending on how you want to look at things).
Mormons believe "in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law" (Article of Faith #12. If one person or even a group of people began to persecute us violently, we would rely on the judicial system for redress and fixing the problem.
Mormons are unique as being the only religion that has had an official state-issued extermination order leveled against it. When that occurred in Missouri in 1838 (the order was issued by the Missouri governor), it was the direct result of Mormons
not following their leaders' counsel, taking the law into their own hands, and responding violently to persecution. So you can argue that we have not always responded peacefully and lawfully to persecution. But the events of 1838 I think clearly taught us as a people that an unlawful, unpeaceful response is disastrous, and that the Lord will not support us when we angrily counterattack in this way.
wikipedia link
If you look to LDS scripture for answer to the question, you will find examples in the Book of Mormon that provide additional answers. We talk very highly of the people of Ammon who refused to defend themselves when attacked. Instead, they knelt down and prayed, and eventually their attackers felt so badly for killing them (after killing about 1000), that more than 1000 of the attackers ended up joining the people of Ammon. So its a powerful story for a non-violent response.
wikipedia link
Those same people's children, however, did not take an oath of nonviolence, and a generation later they stood up to defend their country. Here we find an alternative answer, where a violent response is justified when under the legal authority of the national government, when you are not fighting an aggressive war, and when you as a nation are keeping the commandments of God. In that case, the Lord protected them and not a single young man from the Ammonites died in the war (despite being in severe battles against greater numbers of better trained foes).
The Book of Mormon also has examples of people who stopped keeping the commandments, and fought aggressive wars out of a desire for vengeance. The Book of Mormon concludes with an example of this type of unjust war--if the Nephites (those who had historically followed God, but had become wicked) had repented and fought defensively, they would have survived. Instead, the Lord abandoned them and they were destroyed, bringing to end a 1000+ year civilization. (see chapters
3 through
6 of the Book of Mormon section penned by the author named Mormon.
Probably the darkest and most embarrassing chapter in Mormon history occurred when Mormon settlers near Cedar City, Utah, attacked a wagon train of settlers from Arkansas, after the wagon train had threatened them and had even claimed to possess a gun that killed the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith. The Mormon settlers' response was brutal and heinous, and has haunted the Church even since that day in 1857, known as the
Mountain Meadows Massacre. The LDS church has strongly condemned the actions of the vigilantes that committed those crimes, and the tragic event illustrates why a violent, non-legal response to threats is not a joking matter.
So, that's a long answer for, "we would let the legal system take care of it, and even if we wanted to strike back at you, we woudn't."
