Northern Ireland has endured a turbulent violent history since its inception, with the last 40 years being characterised by ethnic conflict and a fledging peace process. This chapter explores the findings from a series of interviews with individuals who had used violence during the conflict to pursue political goals. The focus is on the processes involved in deciding to join Loyalist or Republican paramilitary groups and employ violence to bring about political change and also on how they view the current peace process in Northern Ireland. The interviewees' accounts echo features identified by other researchers as being antecedent to paramilitary membership, such as having the support of the immediate community, or the involvement of prior family members (see Crawford, 2003; Post, Sprinzak & Denny, 2003). However, the rational decisions revealed in these accounts demonstrate that the interviewees engaged in rational decision making as opposed to either being mindlessly stimulated into membership in response to an environmental stimulus, or joining an armed group due to some underlying personality characteristic. These results highlight the degree to which individuals bear, and accept, personal responsibility for joining a paramilitary group (as opposed to membership simply being stimulated by uncontrollable dispositional or situational forces).