The stereotype is that of the large armed, steel faced bruiser, who shoots, cuts, stabs his way through throngs of enemy. This stereotype has merit: this person is needed at times and places, but only after sustained failure in effective warriorship.
In my view, the effective warrior wakes up daily determined to make it impossible for his enemies to attack, to make it impossible for them to properly organize, to make it difficult for them even to conceive of him as an enemy worth attacking.
One could ask: if there is no war, how can one speak of a warrior? My answer would be that violence–war–is always a possibility, and the warrior never forgets this, or forgets to prepare for it. But actual violence is always a failure, is it not? You didn’t think the damn thing through, and present timely countermeasures.
Two quotes from memory:
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Isaac Asimov (very approximate)
Violence is the last recourse of an exhausted mind. The father of a friend of mine, who was perhaps not a gangster, but who regularly associated with them, and had an expressed capacity for actual violence.