Underappreciated historical weapons: THE GUN SWORD!

I get it like I get it out of this ratings I'm shed and before anyone asks this is a fake okay yeah it's a pretty cool looking fake but no it's called an imitation firearm under Australian law imitation okay it's plastic and usually even imitation firearms are illegal in Australia unless you have a lawful reason to possessing one which I do and with that out of the way welcome back to underappreciated historical weapons where I reveal to you some real actual you know weapons that existed in history that are so cool that people don't actually realize all when I say people most people there are some of you are particularly informed that know a lot about this stuff but to some people they think that these weapons are just pure fantasy creations we've already been out to have a look at the executioner sword and in this video we are going to be looking at guns swords now the most famous gun sword that people generally familiar with is a gun blade from Final Fantasy 8 and kind of because of that they just you know people assume well it's a fictional thing that's a fictional in a video game stuff that they didn't really exist but I'm here to tell you they actually did it's the peanut butter and jam logic when you have something that's really really cool really cool what happen if you combine them sometimes I love that logic now the guns sword really came into being around or became more prominent in the 17th and 18th centuries this is the period where the pistol started to really come into its own right and became the standard sidearm for self-defense but when the pistols were you know in the early days when I'm coming around there was some distinct limitations about them one of them being rate of fire most pistols could only get one shot before they needed to be reloaded in a fairly time-consuming manner and so if you're in a desperate situation where people only have one shot having a backup melee weapon was very very useful in fact a sword so sword was still very common in the 17th century but you're already holding a gun in one hand and if that is your primary hand where you're able to perform certain articulate movements in a far more coordinated manner you need up put the gun away and then draw your weapon so the way to fix this problem is to have the weapon and gun combined where you get your single shot off and then you have a weapon that you can still use to defend yourself if you don't have enough time to reload the kind of companion element to this idea of a gun sword is of course a gun knife and in fact it seems like gun knives were even a little bit more prominent than gun swords knives are not as bulky they can be just as lethal though of course you fight differently with a knife compared to a sword and sword has certain advantages and keeping your opponent at bay with the reach but pistol knives very very common in history and there are actually a lot of examples some of the best integrations between a knife and a gun that I have seen these designs where the blade has been kind of expertly crafted to be a single piece with the barrel itself and Jake they look pretty awesome yep for myself if I was to pick between a knife and a sword for self-defense I would always go with the sword and this idea of combining a sword and a gun wasn't just around where the single-shot pistols even when revolvers were developed there are combinations of swords and revolvers this image here depicts a combination left for hmm French something pinfire revolver and sword it dates to 1800 in Paris France this weapon combines a short bladed sword with a six-shot pepperbox revolver the blade has a short double fuller leading to single fuller's which run the rest of the length and there are panels of etched scrollwork on each side it's a pretty cool example and it shows that yeah gun swords are even around when multiple shot pistols were developed this does raise an interesting question though why didn't every gun have a knife or sword blade attached to it I mean for me because it's a no-brainer if you can add a knife and especially a sword to a gun I'm gonna do it but not everyone did it and so as to why pure speculation okay and my speculation is there is a matter of practicality involved with it also a gun is a far more efficient weapon in a sword and if you had the option to put someone down with a bullet than with a blade you would generally go with the bullet yet when I do look at these gun blade combinations there is something that comes to mind that perhaps a more proficient gun person shooting experienced them would be our to help me figure out and it's the fact that having a blade and especially a sword on the tip of a gun well I could really see it starting to weigh down the barrel and make aiming more difficult and this possible detrimental feature could be increased more so with a sword so there you go you guys in America and you are illegal responsible gun owners perhaps this is something you might be out of test how much of an effect even detrimental effect is having a blade attached to the barrel have in regards to accuracy because even just right now I can test it and holding it out like that there's a lot more weight I'm not gonna be able to maintain this position for very long at all it's weighing me down and you know double-handed okay I can be a bit longer but this is a significant weight like this sword here 1.1 kilos big difference as opposed to this so this might also actually answer the question why gun knives seem to be more common than gun swords maybe Scala Grimm can do the test he strikes he's the type of guy who would be out of figure this out really well that'll be very interesting to find out though in regards to just the you know example I just shown there does seem to be a simple enough answer which would reduce the weight issues significantly enough but maybe not completely which is why it's still more common to have guns with no blades attached and it's in regards to the direction in which the blade is pointing now when you look at a handgun and you think okay which way could I attach a blade to it it seems logical and evident for the blade to point in the same direction as the barrel you'll be pointing that gun at whoever you want to protect yourself against and therefore the tip of the blade is also in that direction so if they cut if they're running towards you all kind of run onto the blade itself yet if they're going to be that close they're you know directly in striking distance to if I was to replace what I'm holding here with a sword well chop chop so I find it interesting that I have not found any examples of a gun sword in which its configuration was like so it is so much easier to maintain this position than it was before but I'm not saying it's completely easy it's still significantly heavier and I'm already starting to feel the weight pull down so I'm thinking that there's probably still detrimental effects with a configuration like this just not as many and the other thing that I find interesting about this configuration is that the barrel is actually kind of standing in place of one of the quillin's and sorry if I was to duplicate it you know having a barrel point towards you doesn't feel to secure so maybe this a double-barrel Crillon sword design might not be a best option but it gives you kind of a backup I mean I was watching a YouTube video that was actually showing a double-barrel gun and the reason why I'm pointing this out is that it showed you can fit a double magazine into the handle of a gun and so if you had the safety and you weren't worried about a gun pointing in your own direction you couldn't actually have a design where you had a double magazine in the handle and then for the quill instill as a barrel for each end and when you go like bang bang bang you can just kind of flip it around and then that's enough imperil there and you know every load and you get to go bang bang bang again now I'm sure there's actually some of you screaming about a very obvious and clear kind of conclusion to this concept of combining knife or blade and gun because they didn't necessarily disappear ok this idea has persisted even to the modern day and it's not necessarily in permanent integration of knife or sword with gun but as a optional fixture that you can attach to the end of rifles yes I'm talking about bayonets a bayonet does seem to be a more practical and versatile option to this this kind of problem if you run out of bullets and someone is still running at you and you need to defend yourself and you want something a bit more effective than your fists a blade very very useful and so having a blade on the end of the gun there we go now isn't necessarily a gun sword or a gun knife this bayonet rifle attachment in fact a bayonetted rifle has more in common with a spear or pole arm than it does with a knife or sword but Spears and pole arms are very very deadly as well so this isn't necessarily a bad thing it's just a different thing and needs to be used differently because you fight with a sword differently than you do with a spear or pole arm going back to the more historical examples of these blade gun combinations it's interesting that I haven't found too many examples of permanently fixed blades to rifles as always seems to be bayonets and perhaps that's because that's just more practically convenient having something you can just attach and you know take off so if you don't think you're gonna be needing this blade on the end of the gun you can take it off get rid of the weight and perhaps that assists in aiming yet in a meal a situation where you do have someone coming up against you I do feel something more substantial than just a bayonet might be better as a permanent fixture to your gun but it's that kind of balance between practicality and effectiveness when you actually need to use it and more often than not convenience and practicality does seem to win out more so above full fledge effectiveness not at every situation but that does seem to be a very significant consideration a good example of this generally in a medieval ish scenario the best weapons and equipment that you can kick yourself out in would be like full plate armor with a real serious polo halberd or pole axe but did people wear those things for you know for self-defense every single day no because wearing full plate armor and carrying around a big heavy pole arm is very inconvenient okay you got a lot of other things you need to do in your casual everyday life and so instead of using the most effective you know UL equipment that they could wear to protect themselves in a self-defense situation they picked the weapon that was most convenient to carry around with them which happened to be the sword again this is generally why people carry round pistols for their weapon of self-defense they're not full-on assault rifle but when they're going into battle you would generally pick a salt rifle over pistol every single time and but you'd still have a pistols back up generally and perhaps this is why the bayonet fixture to the end of a rifle is just the obvious go-to option than attaching like some serious full-on blade along you know the on the bottom side of the barrel of the gun like a big blade good rifle 40 things it'll be awesome but it would be far more inconvenient to carry around I carry you know she that thing because you have a if you have it like a big blade attached to the bottom of your rifle can you can you like sheath it on the sign but then you're pulling out and then you got though and the butt of the gun is a lot bigger than just the handle of the sword and stuff like that so if so yeah black bayonets I might not be able to do big chopping motions but I still have something you know quite effective to use if I'm thrown into a meal a situation and I run out of bullets in some type of fight but there you go this has been a historical gun sort and a gun knife that truly did exist in history this is not a fictional creation and my thoughts on this type of weapon as to how effective and efficient they might be you know problems associated which and why perhaps we don't see them as often in the modern day because the other thing in the Monday it's a lot easier to reload and it was in the past even revolvers could take a lot longer but now it's a simple matter removing a magazine placing with a new arm and you're good to go so the priority in someone's mind when you're on out of bullets now it's just reload as quickly as possible then oh crap he's still running at me I'd better start trying to chop him or stab in with the blade I have on my gun because like I kind of mentioned the towards beginning of this video killing someone with a bullet it's generally a lot easier not more efficient and safer for you than trying to get closer and killing them with a bladed type weapon thank you for watching I hope you've enjoyed there's been a really interesting one to tackle and of course I hope to see you again until that time [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 1,804,437

Keywords: gun, guns, sword, swords, gun sword, gunsword, pistol, knife, gunblade, gun blade, blade, pistolsword, pistol sword, final fantasy, fantasy, medieval, history, historical, middle ages, game of thrones, dnd, d&d, top ten, top tenz, top 10, dungeons and dragons, skyrim, lord of the rings, god of war, kratos, video, game, rpg, roleplaying, weapon, weapons, bayonet, rifle, knight, knights, castle, castles, rapier, longsword, hema, chivalry, historical european martial arts, education, krotos, anime, knight's, pirate, katana

Id: MKZCKCE6lmQ

Length: 13min 20sec (800 seconds)

Published: Tue May 08 2018