Never brandish a weapon you aren't mentally prepared to take someone's life.

By threatening to use lethal force, you're going all-in... if you're bluffing, you're gonna lose.

A fearful person holding a weapon isn't a threat. A determined and confident person whose entire demeanor is screaming "I WILL farking kill you if you don't back the fark off".

This illustrates the fallacious thinking held by anti-weapon/pacifist types: they're afraid of the weapon itself, not the person holding it... and through projection think that everyone else shares that view. If they have a weapon, they often think of it as a magic talisman, that just merely displaying it will make people cower like a vampire confronted with a cross.

People who are familiar with weapons and understand violence know that a weapon is just a tool. Without deadly intent backing it up, a gun or a blade is no more of a threat than a marshmallow. Conversely, if you do have a combat mindset, ANYTHING is a weapon.

some_beer_drinker: a samurai sword is my weapon of choice for home defense.

I might rethink that if I were you.
For reference, I am iaidoku, and train daily in Eishin-ryū - and with shinken, not bokken. There is most often at least one actual Nihonto shinken, not some show sword, within my reach at any given time in my house and often in my vehicles in my dojo bag.

Given that, my chosen home defense weapon is a 12 ga. shotgun. My choice for pdw is a compact .40

Just sayin'

doglover: RexTalionis: doglover: A katana isn't for scaring people away by waving. It's for killing them ten seconds before the know they're dead with lightning fast draw/cut attacks. Iiado. Lookitup!

If you wanna scare kids away, get a shotgun with a nice pump action.

Claymore, man.

A claymore's a varied word now applied mostly to one handed basket hilted things. If you mean a longsword like William Wallace had in Braveheart, though, I'm with ya. Plus, I can use mine indoors. Dunno about other people, but I know I can.

I thought he meant an antipersonnel command-det mine.

best to use a gladius or wakizashi indoors.

She appears to know what the fark she's doing...

He_Hate_Me: Seems fairly self-explanatory:





This was pretty much my thinking the first time I had sex.

Oh, subby, "I'm just sayin'". There is one phrase that is over-used.

CSB Time

A loooooong time ago there was a website that sold swords, maces, spears, ect...

They had what was called a 'fluted mace', with all the usual 'how well its made' statements but it actually included a statement about how it had actually been used for home defense.

I've always just had this horrible image of some dismayed police officers looking at some guy with his head bashed open with a mace... wondering if they can talk the owner in to buying a pistol so they never have to worry about writing a report like this again.

Personally, indoors I'd go with a gladius. Or a kukhuri for the scary-looking-blade factor. The latter has a thick-as-hell back that you can use for non-lethal blows if you don't want body parts littering the floor.