Weapon Safety concern

[Draven]

Hey everyone,

At the last Seattle event, a friend of mine was told his weapon wasn't safe for combat, because it didn't have a thrusting tip. It was a flanged mace, foam-latex. This bothered me, but I couldn't place the reason at the time, other than I didn't really feel it was a particularly dangerous weapon, and I've done my share of LARPing (over 10 years, now).

Then I realized why. It seems strange that we don't require foam-latex swords to have squishy tips (because then they'd look silly), of which have -considerably- smaller tips and, because of it, are far more thrusting-unsafe than a mace that might be about two feet long at the most. Simply put, I can't really imagine an argument that could be made that would exclude foam-latex swords from being allowed to be used without thrusting tips, but not a shorter mace. Heck, even if I -was- to thrust with the mace for some reason, the wider impact area would actually spread out the force, meaning it would do less actual damage to me, not to mention it wouldn't fit in an eye-socket (though you'd get a pretty nice shiner).

Is there a way this could be addressed?

 

[Saephis]

I believe persons using latex weapons are not allowed to thrust with them. Thus the trade off for not being required to have a thrusting tip.

 

[obcidian_bandit]

Purchased latex weapons aren't required to have thrusting tips, and you're not allowed to thrust with them. Home made latex weapons get into a kind of shady area. I suspect that not having a thrusting tip wasn't the actual issue, and it was more likely that it was a lack of a compressible head. Was it a marshal that told you about the weapon?