Do people use swords nowadays?
Some kinds of swords are still commonly used today as weapons, often as a side arm for military infantry. The Japanese katana, wakizashi and tanto are carried by some infantry and officers in Japan and other parts of Asia and the kukri is the official melee weapon for Nepal.
Swords are still being made by modern artisans. Some pursue the traditional methods while others apply modern tools, techniques and materials to the craft. The vast majority of commercially available swords have been made with modern tools and materials as it brings greater profit and less time than hand forging.
The answer is simply no. No mater what magic technology thing that makes guns obsolete you come up with there will always be at minimum a better solution then swords assuming swords are not made even more obsolete. Super light weight extremely bullet resistant material that can easily worn head to toe?
In the Napoleonic Wars they were still a capable cavalry weapon, but they were obsolete in first world warfare by the mid-1800s. Infantry swords became irrelevant in the 1600s.
The final blow came with the invention of pistols. In the 18th Century, these new weapons eventually replaced swords as the preferred method of duelling – while you had to learn how to wield a sword, anyone could simply pull a trigger.
The British retired swords as fighting weapons in 1918, but the US Army didn't officially retire swords as fighting weapons until 1934 (by which time it had been decades since the US Cavalry had actually used their swords in combat).
Though swords are no longer really used in a combat capacity, a wide variety of swords are still very much used in more honorary capacities – everything from the commissioning of officers to weddings. In fact, most officers in the military have ceremonial swords, and training in swords is part of officer training.
The use of the sword as an effective military weapon has been abandoned since the First World War, but its decline had begun at a very much earlier period.
In the US Army swords are used for ceremonial purposes like cutting cake.
| Zweihänder | |
|---|---|
| Produced | ~1500–present |
| Specifications | |
| Mass | 2–4 kilograms (4.4–8.8 pounds) |
| Length | up to 213 centimetres (84 inches) |
Are swords banned in US?
So while it may be legal in some specific circumstances, carrying a sword in public is typically illegal. If you are facing weapons charges, you should speak with a criminal defense attorney as soon as possible.
The oldest stone-tipped projectile weapons date to 280,000 years, study says. The oldest known stone-tipped projectiles have been discovered in Ethiopia. The javelins are roughly 280,000 years old and predate the earliest known fossils of our species, Homo sapiens, by about 80,000 years.
Though swords are no longer really used in a combat capacity, a wide variety of swords are still very much used in more honorary capacities – everything from the commissioning of officers to weddings. In fact, most officers in the military have ceremonial swords, and training in swords is part of officer training.
Iaido is essentially kata based. The Gurkha are probably the only culture that still considers a sword (of sorts) as a weapon that might seriously be used. It's still ceremonial for them, but it has been used on occasion in modern times. It's certainly not their primary weapon.
It depends on what you mean by “sword.” If you're talking about sabres and cutlasses and rapiers and such, the answer is usually “no,” given the realities of modern warfare. Machetes are the modern equivalent of short swords, and they are carried and used around the world.
The Model 1902 Army Officers' Saber is the current sword used by officers of the United States Army and United States Air Force. The official nomenclature for the current regulation U.S. Army saber is “saber for all officers, Model 1902”.