[Ramius]

As part of our Saturday event, we had allowed the sensei of the dojo we “borrowed”(er... rented) that day to partake in our class. He was, of course, a student of some thirty-plus years of asian martial arts of various kinds.

Near the end of the day, after our “free-play” exercises, he was naturally curious to see if his decades of training in martial arts would ~work~ against the longsword stuff he’d seen that day. So he picked up a practice Katana, and our Instructor picked up a practice longsword.

It wasn’t pretty. Poor guy didn’t stand a chance.

Clearly, the big difference was that the asian MA focus is about form over function. It has to look good before it has to work well. The European martial art tradition is that much more about killing, and ruthlessly.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

By the way, have you ever seen the movie ‘the Prince of Foxes’. starring Tyrone Power and Orson Welles (as Caesare Borgia)? The dueling techniques they used (unfortunately with the rapier) were like nothing I've seen in other movies, and seemed rather realistic and not too pretty.

[300winmag]

The European martial art tradition is that much more about killing, and ruthlessly.

Which is why the gun replaced everything else. And why the Europeans decided they should let the government take their guns for safekeeping.