I have walked into many specialty, (novelty) stores and seen katanas and such either on the wall or in a display case readily available for purchase by any wannabe samurai who has the money, some of them aren't cheap. My dad inherited an American Civil War sword and scabbard from my grandfather, which is now in my posession. I was just a kid then, but we brought it over the CDN border no sweat, (they are very common, and popular, it is the same model as the one used in the movie "The outlaw Josie Wales" where Clint Eastwood keeps firing on empty chambers at a Yankee ex soldier who draws the sword and Clint ends up using it against him, although, by the pristine condition of the thing I would imagine it is a replica, mine is the genuine article, with the stamp on it, "Ames Mfg Co. Chicopee Mass", the date is hard to read, 1865 or 1863, can't tell, and yeah, it's a Yankee sword).
The irritating part for my dad, and myself, though he never owned firearms, was that his dad's widow, (his mom had died and his dad had re-married) erroneously assumed the two pistols that were part of the set could not be imported to Canada and she had given them to an Amercian uncle of my dad's. Even by Canada's strict laws, these pistols, given their age are not even considered firearms today and need not be registered, and at that time could have been imported with little or no fanfare.
My buddy, (former SAS, sniper, sniper instructor at The British Sniper School at Warminster,[appropriate], South African and London cop) used to say during training, "body body head, body body head, just to make sure they're really really dead". It sounds better with his British accent and sergeant's authority. The drill was two targets with six rounds, re-load, repeat, and it works because you have that rythm in your head, bang bang bang, instead of bang bang, pause, bang.
He is good, at least a good shot, no question. But I watched a video of myself taken by my daughter at a competetition, ( I'm not a pro, or even a good shot and if I can find the video again I probably wouldn't post it anyway because only 60% of my shots hit the targets), but I surprised myself at how fast I could re-load and re-engage, three mags with six shots each. The fellow in the video lowered his pistol and looked down at it during his re load. I was trained to re-load without taking my eyes off the target, and there are only three rules, practise, practice, and more practice. Helps me be fast, but doesn't improve my aim.
