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Guess I should have given a definition of weapon there: "tool intended to cause damage to a living being"...

If you think of the evolution of any weapon mankind has used, most can be traced back to a tool used for a "benign" purpose. Most of the impact weapons (maces and the like) go back to the basic rock used to break open foodstuffs. Edges trace back to our first constructed tool, the stone knife (which was meant to slice meat and skins).

Projectile weapons though (bows, spears, guns) have only ever been intended as weapons (using the definition used above). That basic rock Og used to bash Ug's head in had been used for breaking open coconuts for awhile before Ug's demise... not so the spear Og later used to harvest a deer.

Don't get me wrong, I'm in no way going off on some sort of "weapons are evil" rant. Just making an observation. and I've made the opposite observation many times ("almost every basic tool man has created has been used as a weapon at some point").

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