it pisses me off to hear these army recruitment faggots talking about "honor" and "self discipline." you must realize that pointing a mechanical contraption that uses explosions to blast a small metal projectile at something isnt honorable nor does it take great skill "we want you to go shoot people you dont know because they did something that made us mad and we dont wanna do it ourselves". if you want to see real fighters, real warriors, look into melee combatants. bayonettes do not count.

there are a few clases of which this area pertains to: one being bladed weaponry; this would include swords of course, daggers, staves in some cases, naginatas, throwing stars, etc

another class would be blunt weapons. this includes anything you can wield that has no real edge. basic, effective, whatever.

piercing weaponry includes but is not limited to sais, pens, pencils, eating utensils, spears, nails, broken glass, you get the idea.

i myself am a swordsman, specifically eastern swords (at the moment, i lack a straight bladed sword - thus rendering me a broken scottsman) so i will attempt to bore you with a short history on eastern swords.

the katana is ideally made to be a slicing weapon, the function behind it is that once you have made entry into your target with a first inital hack you pull the blade the rest of the way through making a nice clean cut. the physics aspect of this comes from the curve in the blade, it makes for a smoother motion thus creating an easier movement for the user. the tang (the little tapered part at the end of the blade) is there for wiggle, taking a bit of stress off the blade. without it the force of a hard impact has a potential to shatter the blade. handles are most often made of wood (duh) and wrapped in a cloth to absorb shock if you were to make hard contact. the best katanas have the blade as one single piece of steel that goes clear to the bottom of the handle. swords are made of all kinds of metal ranging from really crappy aluminum to ASSAB-k120C (powdered steel). the powdered steel is what katanas are tradionally made out of.

masamune (he was a real life person, not a name for a sword) used powdered steel to make his legendary swords. there is a story about him and a rival sword maker, both of whom were called upon by the emporer to make the finest sword. the final test was to have both sword makers stand under a small waterfall, both holding thier impressive swords in the falls, leaves would come over the edge and as the legend goes the leaves would flow around masamunes sword as to not be disrespectful and tear upon its edge, but the rival sword makers blade caught every leaf as they came over. the emperor thought the rivals sword to be endowed with an evil spirit, and banished the man and his family from the kingdom.

with a powdered steel katana there is very little you cant cut through. it can even stand up to titanium. at any rate the real honorable warriors are the ones who dont use firearms, as those take little time or skill to master. i would much rather see athletic melee fighters show unbridled rage against another human than watch cletus and his 400 pound incest brother herman take pot shots at iraqis while drinkin moonshine... guns arent a tool for a sport, they an excuse to be fat and lazy.