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There was a striking incident yesterday in the UK when a beach party in Southend turned into general public disorder, with open fights between young men with machetes.
My question for the sub isn’t directly about this, but rather the widespread use of knives in gang warfare as weapons in countries where firearms aren’t readily available. In particular, why aren’t pole arms more widely used instead? My understanding from medieval warfare is that pole arms are generally preferable to close-range weapons like swords and axes, in terms of ease of use, lethality, and safety. Granted, a spear would be hard to conceal, but you’d think that enterprising young men could find ways to eg convert umbrellas or walking sticks into effective melee weapons by attaching a sharp point to them.
Is this a case of an inadequate equilibrium in weapon usage? Or is there a very good reason why pole arms aren’t being used?
Spears and other pole arms are clearly superior for using in formations of disciplined men with cohesion and adequate, competent leadership.
That isn’t gangs. Bringing a spear to a general melee is a very bad idea, you want flexibility over reach when you can’t count on your buddy to have your flank. Historically aristocrats in single combat used swords(or ranged weapons) for the same reasons. Spears are for peasant levies more afraid of their sergeants than the enemy.
I disagree. I follow plenty of HEMA accounts, and from pretty much every attempt at simulating a duel between Dude with Sword vs Dude with Spear, the spear comes out ahead, the advantage from reach is enormous.
The only times where sword dude has a decent chance is when he's got a shield too, or has significant armor coverage letting him press the attack. Random gang members usually bear neither. Swords were normally sidearms, and spears generally inconvenient to carry about during regular life, which is likely why they aren't prevalent today too.
But the gangs aren't dueling, it's a many vs many fight.
A spear is still superior! You have much more control of your immediate space and can zone out multiple opponents. Even a minimal amount of practise can make sharp pointy stick a very bad time for someone who can't poke you back. You can also protect your buddies and be an absolute nuisance to defend against in case they're not carrying a spear.
It's the (lack of) availability of armor and shields, combined with how much of a PITA it is to carry around a spear that means they're not really seen in brawls or gang fights. These aren't the sharpest pitchforks in the shed we're talking about to boot.
This makes me wonder: might telescoping retractable spears be a solution to this problem? My immediate concern would be that such designs would fare far worse at imparting lots of force to an enemy without breaking, and this seems to have been echoed by one or two of the few things that came up when I searched for such spears just now. But there’s gotta be some clever design that could get around this, right?
Tacticool catalogues have spears that can screw together (example: https://www.budk.com/Amazon-Jungle-Survivor-Break-Down-Spear-Cast-2Cr13-51329)
I don't have this one, but I do have one similar to this, and it's remarkably solid-feeling, I'm pretty happy with it aside from the whole "why would you ever need a spear" question. And it seems easy enough to put together with 5-10 minutes warning on a fight, which might match reasonably well to gang violence: you know when the other gang shows up and as long as you know you're going to fight rather than run, you just screw it together and put it down somewhere that's easy to reach for when things kick off. If they don't, take it back apart, stick it in your backpack, and head out.
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A telescoping spear seems quite feasible to make, but in a country that bans guns I'd expect the law to take an extremely dim view of such a thing.
Heck, I remember learning as a kid that nunchucks and butterfly knives were illegal in England not just to own but even to show in movies, which explained some bizarre censorship in some movies (IIRC the Mel Gibson movie Payback had a non-violent, non-combat scene cut where someone was showing off a butterfly knife). So it wouldn't be surprising if telescoping polearms were banned as soon as they became commonly used.
C. Thomas Howell in the original Red Dawn film did the butterfly knife open and close in a random scene I guess to show his transformation into a "real fighter" compared to the high schooler he had been at the film's beginning. I remember owning at least two after watching that and becoming adept, if not in the actual use of the knife, in its rapid, smooth opening and closing.
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