Whoops...

[moominmuppet]

I laid down to take a little nap about 7:30pm. And woke up at 2:30am. Oops. Should go back to bed; I have to be up in about three hours to go escort.

In the process of unpacking the games I ran across two plastic toy scimitars that used to decorate my wall (I think they also used to make *crash* noises when you banged them together, but apparently not anymore). It got me idly wondering about why I don't like having toy guns around, but toy swords don't elicit the same reaction. I wonder if I lived in a society where swords were actually regularly used as weapons, would I feel differently? Would I feel differently about toy guns if I lived in a society where real guns weren't a hot-topic issue?

Comments

[bec76.livejournal.com]

I prefer edged weapons because they don't "accidentally" go off. It's a lot harder to shoot yourself in the foot when you're cleaning a knife or a sword. Plus, if you hang them on your wall, people just think "Oh, they're into medieval weapons" and feel less threatened.

Of course, if people knew I have a lot more experience swinging a sword or ax and hitting what I'm aiming at than shooting a gun and hitting the target, perhaps they'd be more uncomfortable.

[jajy1979.livejournal.com]

Blame Mom. She is so anti-gun that she literally drove us towards swords as an "acceptable alternative". That and the growing up with Le Guin, Tolkien, et al. made us have a facination with fantasy and science fiction.

[musicalchaos.livejournal.com]

For me a lot of it boils down to the method of killing, and more over the perception there of. With a gun, it seems very... dispassionate, detached from the victim, where as with a sword or some other sort of close combat weapon, it's up close and personal. It's an ugly, bloody mess and you have to see the person you're killing, and frankly while neither is appealing, it seems a much harder thing to get through when you're standing right there and see just what has happened. I don't know, either way it's a horrible situation.