Did the concept of personal defense weapons exist before guns? Swords and knives seem to have been carried for dueling...

Did the concept of personal defense weapons exist before guns? Swords and knives seem to have been carried for dueling, but did farmers keep spears or crossbows by their doors in case of intruders?

Are you stupid

Personal defense is part of our nature, the concept is inherent to mankind.

No they just rang the old bill to clobber bandits if they showed up.

Hypocritical ways of calling things related to war and warfare "defensive" did come into existence past firearms.

Yeah knives mostly, in a lot of places throughout history swords have been illegal for the average person to have.
Quarterstaves, being just long pieces of wood were easy to make and cheap so it wasn't uncommon for poor travelers to carry them.
Bows also, of the hunting variety, were owned by a lot of folks, but it can kill a unarmored man just as well as an animal.

The thing about the times before when guns were commonplace is that oftentimes the bandit or thug was either using a better weapon, or was better trained with it then the person they were attacking, meaning that even if you had a weapon it might just be better to surrender your money or goods anyway.
There's a saying, "God made men, and Sam Colt made them equal" essentially guns help level the odds so that your average man has a better chance at defending himself.

Now we have flying unmanned robots with energy weapons!

>in a lot of places throughout history swords have been illegal for the average person to have.
Thats a load of bullshit right there. It's like THE meme some merimutt gun nut would imagine the poor downtrodden European peasant.

For your question, they carried about everything available according to circumstances, this could be anything from a simple knife up to full sized crossbows, and now, they didn't carry it for duelling, get your head out of that Hollywood ass.

here are some of the more common tools of trade of the pre firearms era
>Bauernwehr, peasants best friend

>Messer, for when the Bauernwehr just doesn't cut it

>Swiss tegen, for when you live in the Alps and like pubs and brawling

>Falchion, for when you are either English or Italian and like a fast cutter

>Did anyone say Benis?

>in a lot of places throughout history swords have been illegal for the average person to have.

In Japan only the Samurai were allowed to wield swords and even that right got later relinquished.

Also in China martial arts became a thing because swords and other weaponry was not allowed.

>Thats a load of bullshit right there
Its true though. The Messer was invented specifically to use a loophole in the law that banned swords. The vast majority of people could not legally carry a sword.

>for when you are a rich Italian brat

>The Messer was invented specifically to use a loophole in the law that banned swords.
Thats another load of bullshit and you likely got if from Lindy. There was no such law. Period. Otherwise feel free to provide a source! Messers were a fashion, used by Emperors and townsfolks as well in a time where a full sized war sword was simply to cumbersome to bring to town.

P.S. here is Emperor Maximilian's Messer, guess he had to circumvent laws to then, fuck was the HRE strict on them laws.

>Japan
>China
Pretty obvious the dude wasn't talking about China but medieval Europe.

There is nothing in the OP mentioning Europe. Peasants defending themselves from brigands is the same everywhere in the world

>damage control mode: full

What damage control? Where do you think we are?

In Japan, for example, the average peasant was banned from owning a katana

btw, that's just a short overview of the more common bladed weapons of the era, but there was tons of blackjacks, saps, battons, truncheons and what not, but carrying something like that concealed could bring you in a lot more trouble than you asked for, hence longer variants for open carry were usually preferred.

>The Messer was invented specifically to use a loophole

And that was?....