Fairly recently, I started practicing German longsword with a local ARMA group. I never appreciated the longsword fully before. Like most people who don't have any basis to know any better I thought of the sword in terms of just cut and thrust. However, I am beginning to more fully appreciate the art of using the longsword...the bind, the anti-armor techniques, percussive techniques using the crossguard and pommel, clinches and throws while using the sword, and I also am beginning to understand how on the whole a longsword is pretty much objectively better for killing people than an axe or a hammer. I'm beginning to understand the ways in which a longsword would usually be able to outmanuver an axe or hammer especially when used against an unarmored opponent and given a basic level of skill on the part of the wielder, and accordingly why the sword was symbolic of the military elite in medieval times in Europe.

But damn, at the same time, I also participate every month in shooting sports like USPSA and steel shooting, and again given a skilled operator, I'm really struck by how much unimaginably better modern firearms are than even a longsword.

Before I'd taken up serious study of the longsword, I think I actually had unrealistic ideas about how potent a longsword or katana would be if someone decided to use one in the middle of a firefight. You read and hear all the stories about katanas cutting through several stacked up bodies, and you imagine how quick and powerful someone must be if they practice with the sword, so you imagine that someone with a sword can just hide around the corner, jump out, and lop your head off before you can react, even if you're wearing a kevlar helmet and vest and have got an AK47 in your hands.

But now that I actually practice with a longsword I think I appreciate how it'd actually be really hard to do something like that in reality. You'd need enough room to swing the sword, which would be harder to do if you were hiding around a corner in an enclosed indoor environment, and you'd need to hope that your attack isn't mitigated in its effectiveness if the guy you're ambushing jumps backwards or flinches away when he sees all that movement coming towards him. Even if you hit him, again it would require skill to hit his neck as opposed to, say, his upper arm, and it would be a combination of skill and luck to actually incapacitate the guy instead of only wounding him. It might be more practical with the longsword to try and thrust at the guy in his face or upper torso, but even if you succeeded in ramming the point of your sword into the chest before he can react, I don't see how you could be guaranteed that he'd be incapacitated right away and wouldn't be able to get a shot off half a second later even if he were mortally wounded through the lung or something. With all this body movement and timing you get one penetrating wound into the guy's torso, whereas with a few trigger squeezes the other guy can give you multiple penetrating wounds into your torso that probably penetrate deeper and are more likely to shatter bone. (Actually I kind of have the same question about bayonetting someone...how do you know the other guy won't just shoot you while you're driving your bayonet through his lung?)

And that's thinking about a committed do-or-die high-powered attack, as opposed to a lighter bop on the head that you might see from the bind against another swordsman.

The more I know and the more I practice both, the more I feel that given a basic level of skill in both disciplines, firearms are a lot deadlier than swords. Now a knife might even be different given that it could be used in conjunction with tackling someone and keeping his rifle pointed away from you, but as long as we're talking about swords per se which are going to be used at a slightly longer distance, I'm really beginning to understand how modern firearms made them obsolete.

But I think it's very good for me to understand this, as someone who is interested in role playing games. If I ever wanted to try and run a realistic RPG set in, say, the Pacific during World War II, I would be better mentally equipped to come up with good rules for what happens if a Japanese guy with a katana tries to jump out of the bushes and decapitate a US Marine who is scanning for threats with his 1911 out.


EDIT: All this also leads me to believe that it was easier to be brave on the battlefield in medieval times than today if you were an elite warrior. If you are wearing armor, have the skills, and have the swords, you can probably single-handedly kill a lot of peasants who come at you looking to bash you with an axe or hammer. The armor provides significant protection and your skills and weaponry will let you butcher the poor fools who think they can just swing their heavy tools around and bash your head in that way. I think that one skilled warrior with a sword can fight a lot more palookas with hammers and axes than he could if both he and the palookas were unarmed because in some ways the sword is such a good weapon. But, look at today. If you're an elite warrior with NIJ level 4 body armor and a two thousand dollar HK rifle, you can totally be taken out by a random bunch of palookas with AKs and RPGs. The power of firearms and modern small arms is such that they just need a little bit of luck to get you, even though you still have an excellent chance of killing a bunch of them. This impersonal yet significant element of luck leads me to believe that modern warfare is probably the most dangerous and savage the world has ever seen, eg. Battle of Stalingrad.

It's obvious that the sword was better: it was by far more popular. Same reason no one uses swords now, though: guns are by far better.

Well, swords require skull to use, wheras any idiot can point a gun and pull the trigger.

It's why shotguns an smg are more popular with the less skilled shooters.
It also reinforces the fakeness of so many people in shadowrun running around with swords and using swords in combat.

Well, pretty much any weapon requires a skull to use. I mean, if you somehow lost your skull, you're pretty much out of the fight right there, don't you think?

Well that quote that goes "God made men, Colt made them equal" or whatever it is, is actually more thought out that at first glance. ANYBODY with a firearm can kill any other man. Sure there's some skill as well as reaction time and all that jazz, but bottom line, a mook can shoot a Special forces guy dead just like that. Which is why all the nobility was in uproar at first at the crossbow and then the firearm. A peasant killing a knight didn't happen before, like you said. The knight had equipement and training that made him far, far superior to the average farmer-cum-warrior.

However, on the subject of firearm vs blade, I always thought that that was even an option in shadowrun because of massive advancements in body armour. Armour having advanced so much, you reach a point where a) shooting at someone isn't a reliable way of killing him and b) on the other side of the coin, you can armour up, survive firearms shooting at you enough to close in and decapitate the guy. It's really the only way melee becomes an option in Shadowrun - because of the armour.

I dunno about your group, but everyone in every SR game I've played runs around with guns, not swords. Rarely, there's someone who can *also* melee, if the situation calls for it. And on a meta level, Stick & Shock. 'Nuff said.

While I agree with most of what you've posted, as someone who studies edged combat and shooting sports, myself...I have to disagree -- albeit slightly -- with your apparent final thoughts/conclusion.

Read up on the casualty reports on actual shooting firefight engagements in modern combat (from the Battle of Mogadishu up to more recent fights, in Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance with the US military) and you'll see wildly out-of-balance fights between the well trained, well equipped, military and the comparatively rag-tag guys they're fighting.

Yes, a bunch of guys hopped up on khat and toting AK's can kill a highly trained, well equipped, motivated, soldier...but the final tallies still tend to be plenty skewed, when all is said and done. Even the conservative estimates for the Battle of Mogadishu, for instance, will show you about 600 SNA Militia killed to 19 Americans, with about 1,000 wounded compared to the American ~80 (86, I think?).

Bullets, like arrows before them (Agincourt, anyone?) bring a certain amount of fate/luck/chance/whatever onto the battlefield, and there's certainly no denying that. But skill, teamwork, motivation, experience...those things all certainly still play their part.

Heh, heh, heh

You spotted the only important bit in my post

I've read somewhere that it was partly explained by the fact that non-trained people will instinctively avoid killing people. So most people will shoot at the sky, hoping that the other people on their side will do the actual killing.

Hitting something with a crossbow also takes some practice (although probably less than handling a longsword), especially if that something is moving on a horseback and you plan to stay alive afterwards.
Firearms were even more demanding in terms of skill, because until rifles became standard issue in the crimean war the only effective way to use them was to fire in coordinated barrages while standing in formation...and staying in formation, even when people were dying left and right.

What made crossbows and firearms so dangerous was their availability. A plate mail plus sword and good horse took ages to manufacture and cost a small herd of cattle, which meant only noblemen could afford it, while a crossbow could be made by the local horseshoe maker in a day or so.

I really hope that you are talking about SR and not RL, as a former skeet shooter I can attest that hitting a target the size of tea saucer flying throw the air actually does require some skill.



I can take a person off the street and have them proficient in using a modern crossbow in five days (8 hours drilling a day). The sword takes far, far longer to achieve anything approaching proficiency.

Hitting the guy on the horse with a crossbow bolt would be my second choice. Taking out the horse would most likely render the rider unable to fight. There is a reason why stunt men wear rubber armor when doing those stunts, not to mention having a horse roll over on you...all very bad.

A sword or a knife in SR does have a role to play though. Silencing sentries on a stealthy approach comes readily to mind. But I do agree, during the middle of a firefight...I will stick with my shotgun or smg.

The battle also had the little birds (helicopter for those who don't know) making strafing runs, miniguns ablazing that would account for a bit of the casualties on the somali side.

Which I might add is nowhere near realistic

The reason for guns making such a late entrance in japan was that the samurai and shogun were strictly against this, seeing how a samurai took years of training to become a feared warrior, whereas some days of training enabled pawns to kill samurai with guns.

Oh this I gotta hear!

Fairbairn and Sykes disagree with you.

If you're playing Shadowrun for the realism... Stay the hell outta my game

The reason so many people use Katanas and swords is simple... The idea is cool, even if the reality is not. Reality is over-rated anyway.

Bull

You could cut off somebody's head with a knife and the body will still be struggling...not to mention that you will most likely look and smell like a butchered pig afterwards. Better hope the enemy does not have an augmented nose

Katanas and swords also permit you to draw on mystical power (in the form of weapon foci and physical adepts with lots of melee combat boosts) which are not available with firearms. It's a given, but yes, magic has changed the battlefield.

This... Just look at the Tokugawa Era for plenty of details.



You have to remember that when firearms were new, no one was well trained. When Tokugawa took farmers and gave them european rifles your highly trained samurai had just as little skill with a gun as a farmer but they were master swordsmen.

I can't believe you're genuinely saying bladed weapons cannot be used to quietly take out sentries, when there are -- literally -- millenia of military history and gutter crime that say otherwise.

Not to mention all those movies!

Hey, here's a fun game. Go find a U.S. Marine. Tell him (or her) to his face that you can't kill somebody quietly with a knife. Betcha get a real interesting (and graphic) explanation of how wrong you are.

I've never had the opportunity to use a longsword and train with it but I do know the theory and I have look at period texts. I'm a weapons nerd I study them in my free time. I do how ever fence. While fencing has set rules of engagement more so with foil and sabre than epee my faved style. I know where you are coming from.

However melee vs firearms would need massive adjustment to your training with the longsword. Think bayonet drill ect the aim as I can see it is to stagger the opponent beat the gun way and charge in close for the kill. I'm only really going of secondary source for this however and yes a longsword would be very unsuited to this job. A short glave/spear would work seeing as that what a bayoneted rifle.

Firearms unwieldy close up at least more so than a edged blade. Would I take a rapier like weapon up against a shooter. Only if it was all I had and even then I'd fight close to unarmed than with the weapon.

I'm reasonably sure the vikings would disagree with you, and so would the people who fought the vikings.

Yeah, sure, with a sword you can get all fancy with parries and somewhat quicker strikes, but if you have a trained viking with an axe... well, you're just in trouble. The vikings could wield their axes with nearly as much ease as an Englishman could wield a sword, but the hits where much harder. They were nearly impossible to parry because there was so much strength behind them, a blow was much more likely to be deadly, and even if you managed to block the blow with a shield, you'd likely end up with a broken arm, which in those times could easily be fatal in the long term from complications, and short term from losing your ability to use your shield.

I do have to agree however that it is basically silly to think that the use of a melee weapon in a fight with firearms is viable. The fact is that it is only remotely viable if you have the drop on the other person, and at that point you'd most likely be better off just shooting them, so there still isn't much reason to use melee weapons. The Japanese exemplify this for when they outlawed guns in their country because a peasant with a flintlock with virtually no training could easily take out a samurai that had trained for decades with their sword.

As for the gun being an equalizer: don't look at it so much as guy with gun vs guy with gun, but look at it as guy with sword attacking civilians vs guy with gun attacking civilians. If someone has a sword, it would be really easy for three or four people to swamp him and take him down, with maybe only one or two getting seriously injured. If someone has a gun however, they can basically take out a number of people equal to their ammo count because they can strike from a distance, which the sword can't do.

Vikings used swords, just like everyone else.

Sometimes, just like everyone else.

I just take the fact that no one today uses swords in the military for anything related to actual combat as proof enough that guns are far better than swords.

Swords and other bladed weapons are excellent for dis-arming people.

these days, the bayonet is a weapon of last resort, when the position is overrun and the ammo have been spent.

But back before cartridges and other options, a bayonet turned a "club" into a "spear".

the drilled ranks could at any time stop reloading and point their weapons at any onrushing enemies, resulting in something similar to a porcupine.

as for the club part, that was basically the other option. When out of ammo, or when out of time to reload, grab the weapon by the barrel and try to cave in the enemy skull with the other end. Heck, handguns of the era often had reinforced and/or weighted handles for just that option.

these days its more a case of "better to have and not need, then need and not have". And it as they often can double as a knife (tho iirc, there are some agreements going around that says the soldier is not to sharpen the bayonet) there is one less tool for the soldier to carry anyways.

funny enough, the shogun that outlawed guns had recently won his position thanks to equipping his army with just that.

I feel like guns are great-ER for disarming people: 'Drop your weapons!'

i meant this:
http://sultanofsnow.files.wordpress.com/20...-off-794357.jpg

Snrk, okay, yeah.

Which was all the proof he needed for how effective they were

Hey here's a fun game. Go find a random German soldier. Tell him (or her) to his face that you can't kill somebody instantly by "neural shock" from a grazing hit with high-speed ammunition. Betcha get a real interesting (and graphic) explanation of how wrong you are, that the evil high-speed ammo is outlawed by the Hague, Geneva and Imtodrunktostan Accords and that we only didn't get the G11 because it fired said ammunition (nevermind that the muzzle velocity of the 36 is only like 10m/s lower).

Latrine rumors include a lot of tall talk about alleged weapon effects, that does not make it any more true. People who are bleeding out don't just collapse quietly...and before you say "but severing the vocal chords/blood vessels to the brain means you can't scream or struggle!!!11111" I suggest you watch some videos of halal/kosher slaughter. If that still does not convince you, there are also plenty of gore vids with decapacitated humans floating around the web.


PS: And another fun game - ask any soldier who told you about the instant knife kill what he actually used his knife for during his career, except stirring MREs.

*sigh* You seem bound and determined to argue that the use of an edged weapon to take out a sentry with relative quiet has never happened. What's more, you seem determined to do so through cherry picking out the occasional post to disagree with, and to reply to it and it alone rather than anything anyone else has said.

The simple truth is that knives have been used -- even up to the modern era, though admittedly less so in the face of suppressed weapons and subsonic ammunition -- to silently take out enemies, particularly sentries, for thousands of years. Yes, it's been overdone by movies and popular culture, but no that doesn't mean that it does not happen.

We're not talking about decapitation, we're talking about the methodical use of a reasonable-sized edged weapon to take out a guard. You keep talking about severed heads like it has anything to do with the conversation. Of course it's easy for you to talk about decapitation as a poor means of silencing a sentry, but then again I can just as easily -- and nonsensically -- reply with "hand grenades are no good for quietly taking out a sentry, either!"

Meh. Just snipe them anyway, or your neurostun gun. Question done.

You mean your refusal to believe something? Because that's the only thing I ignored and...well, one must believe whatever makes him feel good.


For example where and when?


Then please enlighten me Mr Miyagi, how does one use a blade to take somebody out without a sound?


Because severing the spinal cord (or putting the knife into the brain stem) sounds like the most promising concept to stop someone from screaming or struggling.Again, what is your plan to take out somebody without a sound?

So, Sengir, out of curiosity, how many times have you actually seen someone killed by a knife? Never? Weird, that would mean that you don't actually have any experience or any idea what you are talking about.

Now, I admit, no one in the 'edged weapons can kill silently' camp is likely to have first hand experience with it, but I'm willing to believe that in the several millennia that edged weapons have existed, methods have been developed to kill silently with them, even if that includes the slight inconvenience of placing your hand over the victim's mouth as you stab them.

So yeah, until you round up a couple hundred people and try to kill them silently with an edged weapon (recording the experience as proof) and see how many make a sound and how many don't, and try out several various method of obtaining a silent kill, I'd say your point is basically invalid.

I was told of three such occurances by a marine that served (and claimed to have performed all three) in the Pacific theater during WW2. In the time that I knew him he never told me anything that I found to be embellished.




Depends on the person but, right hand over the targets mouth pulling the head back into your right side shoulder, left hand thrusts the blade into the side of the neck as low as possible. Drawing the blade forward and to the left cuts through the jugular, windpipe, and carotid. Sudden drop of blood pressure in the brain will bring about unconsciousness quickly. A secondary thrust angled upward under the back of the rib cage can be used to puncture diaphram and lower left lung lobe.

Is it absolutely silent?
No. But neither is a suppressed gun shot (even using subsonic ammo). Remember noises travel further at night. On a lucky night you would have rain or wind to cover the sounds. An unlucky night, it is still and snowing...any noise travels far further than you would expect.

Is it messy?
Yup.

Is it absolutely foolproof?
Not at all. Unexpected things always happen.




The spinal column does a pretty good job at protecting the spinal cord as does the skull. My father was killed in a car accident and suffered a base skull fracture, the coroner said that his death was instant so I can't argue that such an injury is beyond the realm of possibility or fatal.

I don't think that anybody has stated that a knife or a sword is absolutely going to give a silent kill in every single situation in RL. If you are looking for absolutes, I cannot offer up any (beyond death and taxes).

As far as swords in SR, they are cool like Bull said (at least he and I think so). Fortunately, SR is a game and if it is fun and doesn't break the game I don't have a problem with a character running around with a sword.

How is it I'm the one refusing to believe something? You're the one that's refusing to believe that a knife has ever been found useful -- by anyone, ever -- to kill someone quietly.


Thanks for out-and-out introducing namecalling to a thread where folks are trying to have a serious discussion about edged weapons, firearms, and the constantly evolving nature of combat.

It's particularly amusing, of course, that you went for "Mr. Miyagi" as an insult, when graceful, traditional, honor-laden martial arts (such as the Karate shown in those movies) has absolutely nothing at all to do with the brutal, ugly, methods used of killing a man with a knife. Major William Fairbairn (co-developer of the British commandos' WWII fighting knife) was once described as having a "disliking for anything smacking of decency in fighting." He's a whole lot more "Sweep The Leg" than "Mr. Miyagi."

Now, as to how (and when) one human being has made a habit of using a knife to quietly kill another? For a start, you can check someplace like this, which is a pdf of US military combatives manuals. Specifically, take a look at Chapter 7, "Sentry Removal."

In fact, speaking of Major Fairbairn, here's a link to several pages worth of information from Get Tough, his own manual on hand to hand combat (including knife fighting). Get Tough shows at least one image of a sentry being killed with a knife, now that I take a glance at it.

Finding just those few examples of (fairly) modern military training manuals took me all of ten seconds or so. I genuinely find it hard to believe you expect someone to hand you a list of times knives have been used to kill someone quietly, though.


Your most promising concept, and the most promising concept of those who train to do this sort of thing, are very different. Good luck putting the knife in the brain stem of an enemy soldier wearing a helmet.

Why on Earth you would assume decapitation as the chosen method of quietly killing a sentry is beyond me.


It's not my plan. While I've taken more than my fair share of knife fighting classes, I've taken knife fighting classes, not commando training. I don't pay my monthly dues to learn how to quietly murder a sentry, sorry. It's just my hope that providing you with a few examples of training manuals from the last fifty or sixty years might help you to realize that yes, it's possible to kill someone quietly with a knife.

So, Karoline, out of curiosity, how many times have you actually seen someone killed by a knife? Never? Weird, that would mean that you don't actually have any experience or any idea what you are talking about.



The burden of proof lies with the person claiming that something DOES exist...


@Bob



And struggling or making sounds while trying to breathe and expulse the blood from the trachea are not exactly functions liked to consciousness, the whole point of falling unconscious is that the brain regions involved in those activities can remain active if there is not enough juice to power the whole brain.


And finally @ Critias: Of course the party line is "no problem, the guy will fall without making a sound or larger mess, just remember that your training and equipment let you pass any obstacle". What else do you expect, a graphic description how the victim will be struggling and squealing like a stabbed pig while soaking the uniform you won't be able to change for a few days in blood? Yeah sure, just like our ZDV 3/11 gives a totally realistic description of burn wounds and not hints like "just wash incendiaries off with cold water, if it continues to burn and produces white smoke cover the wound with wet earth". The point of these jungle books is not just education, but also instilling the reader with a sense that everything will be alright since you are prepared and everything.
Also note that most of the techniques described there involve first hitting the other guy on the head or otherwise stunning him before the actual kill...why should that be neccessary if a knife is just an instant, silent kill?

Damn, it's almost as if I already addressed your point, but you didn't bother to read my actual post. You just saw something you perceived as a slight against you, and flew into a rage, determined to hurt me with a poorly planned repeating of what I said, which I had already anticipated and responded to.


That would be you then, claiming that people DO make alot of noise when they are stabbed in the throat or have their throat slashed or whatever. regardless of any other circumstance.

Anyway, burden of proof in this case actually falls on the person who's belief is outside the accepted norm. Because we have manuals that show dozens of ways to take out a person silently (Which you have conveniently ignored), because it is commonly accepted that it is possible, and because the majority of posters (everyone except you) believe it, it is your burden to prove that those military manuals, that common knowledge, that accepted beliefs are wrong.

So, ignoring Sengir, I think everyone is in agreement that edged weapons are good for silent takedowns.

That said, I think subsonic ammo and a silencer would still be generally preferred, since it has the advantage of being able to be at a distance. That said, I remember from Ghost in the Shell that someone mentioned something along the lines of "Always do an assassination from as close as possible to ensure success." aka use melee over ranged. Is that an actual ideology or something, or was GitS just making it up for the one particular character? I suppose it is harder to miss with a blade on an unsuspecting/untrained target than it is with a sniper rifle from a great distance (thanks to how much wind affects stuff at those ranges), so there might be some merit to an idea like that.

Did you read the same manual I did? This one spent a pretty big block of text explaining to soldiers that killing someone with a knife was a messy, brutal, intimate, affair, and to watch out for the psychological ramifications afterwards. Rather than "No problem, the guy will fall..." it opened the entire chapter with a detailed, intensive, list of things you've got to do just exactly right in order to keep the whole mission from falling apart, explained that it was a difficult, tricky, job.

Which doesn't mean it's impossible -- so don't go gettin' all excited on me, thinking you've cleverly tricked me into admitting debate defeat -- but only that the training manual is realistic about the expectations it instills. No one's ever said it's a piece of cake to kill a man quietly with a knife, only that with the proper training it's possible.

But, anyways. You just go on reading what you want to read (in everyone's posts, as well as our links), pick out the line or two you feel like arguing, and continue to insist that it's "unrealistic" for anyone, ever, to get a quiet kill with a knife.

I don't know. You can kill a rabbit with a hammer without it making a sound. So that would seem to imply you could kill it with a knife to the same effect, and if you can do it with a rabbit, I don't see why you couldn't do it with a person - although it would probably be a good deal harder.

No, not really. I intentionally ignored most of your ludicrous "argumentation" to keep the discussion civil, but if you insist here's a non-whitewashed reply:


Uh-huh, so a lack of practical experience with something outlandish such as slicing peoples' throats automatically disqualifies people to talk about it...at least if those people also dare to burst you Hollywood-induced bubble of silent knife kills. For those who hold your opinion, the standards are kinda lower. And I'm not talking about the usual kind of double standards where hearsay is acceptable for one side while the other is held to impossibly high standards. No, you drive the normal idiocity of double standards to even new levels:


Wow.
Just wow.

People who disagree with you have to do a double-blind study on stabbing humans before you even consider them having an idea of what they are talking about. You on the other hand have a BELIEF. Not even one in a certain point, which would be testable , you simply believe that at some point in time somebody came up with something which might somehow support your point.



Now let's just ignore the impossibility of the study you suggested (after all, if your requirements for the other side's proof were fulfillable, it wouldn't be a good double standard) and assume somebody actually did that study: Would a result like "everybody screamed and struggled like mad" have any significance? Of course not, 100 sliced throats would only represent the tiniest fraction of an infinite number of possible angles, entry points, speeds, knife types, and other variables.
That is why scientific method is not to claim that something exists and then expect the other side to spend the rest of their lives trying to find a counterexample, which might literally take forever. Scientific method is to present proof that something does exist, and present it in a way which fulfills the requirements for useful proofs - most importantly falsifiability



OK, enough OT. We are not talking about science, we are talking about your belief that sometime since the hominisation somebody came up with something to prove your point, and the idea that this belief is all you need to make a valid point. Given these premises, the following statement is extremely comforting

Seriously, if your argumentative insanity made my arguments look good I shoud start thinking about a career as witch doctor or something.

Way to go continuing to ignore 90% of what is written to focus on one narrow point and go off on it for 5 paragraphs.

Perhaps I should have emphasized "I'm willing to believe..." based on the fact that stories of it happening has existed for at least a few millennia, based on the fact that the military provides instructions on doing it, based on the fact that the military in fact bases entire operations around the ability to kill someone with an edged weapon silently.

The problem for you here is that you are arguing that something can not, will not, and has never occurred. If you said 'it is difficult to kill someone silently' or 'not every single kill is going to be totally silent' or something along those lines, I'd believe your argument had some validity, but you are claiming that something that is commonly believed and has already been shown to have plenty of backing, does not ever happen, and have provided no real evidence to support your own side of this argument.

Can't you just agree that you disagree? Seems like a really pointless conversation to me.

Um, so without getting into the argument whether it's easy or hard to silently kill a sentry with a knife, this is another example of how firearms have profoundly simplified killing. Suppressed carbine with subsonic ammo, however you slice it (har), is much easier to kill someone with by shooting them in the eye, than having to low crawl up behind someone, stun him with your knife butt, and then cut open his subclavian artery without anything going wrong.

(With firearms what could still go wrong is if the round glances off the guy's skull, but that's probably less likely than you screwing up a knife stealth kill.)