I don't think, formally speaking, most people would call a bullwhip a weapon, until it was used on them personally.
Then what is it? Schroedinger's leather strip? And does one allow a knife the same latitude?
If you can hit somebody and make the sound, you're talking about carving bigger, deeper chunks out of them, as the sound comes from the tip breaking the speed of sound (or so I understand).
To me that's a bit like saying guns are startlingly lethal if you hit your target.
It's kinda how you're supposed to do it. Not startling. Appropriate.
"When you get your first crack, you just want to keep on cracking."
No smoking the good cat crack jokes, not even a Christina Aguilera corset dress joke? Have I logged into the wrong board?
I think I'd be a little startled if someone killed me with a bullwhip. Though if I had the capacity to reflect on it afterwards, it would probably occur to me that I shouldn't have been, because of the whole weapon thing.
And does one allow a knife the same latitude?
Knives at least have other uses. What else is a whip for?
I think that the Dean Cain series is something about a baseball team.
It's kinda how you're supposed to do it. Not startling. Appropriate.
Right, which was what I was trying to point.
But you seem to already know that.
So I'll shut up now.
Well, but a lot of the time, whips are used to make the noise, and the noise only, to startle. Alternately, whips are used, without making the noise, to sting the skin of cattle and make them react.
I don't think very many cowhands intentionally crack their whips and carve chunks out of their cattle, because (a) hello to the infections and inferior meat and (b) a bellowing, rageful cow is nobody's friend.
I think also that cattle have much thicker skin than humans (which would explain why briefcases are not made of people skin). So, it hurts a cow less to be hit with a whip than it does a human. Same again with cattle prods. In both cases, I would call them herding tools, until they were being used on me.
Also, I'd be pretty startled if I sprouted a bullet hole too, so I'd argue that they're both pretty startling, properly used.
I think that the Dean Cain series is something about a baseball team.
He plays a pro baseballer who be-friends and possibly (memfault) adopts the new orphan batboy. (Not that kind of batboy.)
(b) a bellowing, rageful cow is nobody's friend.
I dunno. Sometimes they run and crash into things in amusing ways.
