Curiously well-armed pacifists

So, I was reading a largely forgettable little manga called Zero In, and in it, there's a chick from this private para-police force, if that makes sense, who's a genius with guns...but won't kill. There's similar characters in Black Cat (Saya, and later Train), and Kaoru's school of kenjutsu in Rurouni Kenshin (except, you know, with swords). All of them insist that you don't have to use guns (or swords) to kill, in a pitiable little "this is a shonen series so we can't have a body count" gesture, that makes Batman's hoplophobia look downright respectable.

Unfortunately, it's codswallop. Guns and swords have one purpose: killing stuff. Yes, you can use them to hunt as well as to fight, but their only purpose is to spill the blood of other living things. You can't, in real life, "intentionally miss the vital spot", or whatever; while swords have flats, if you get cut, blood-loss and infection will do you pretty soon, especially in a premodern setting. Guns are even worse—even little bullets make some big holes. There's a reason the M16 (which shoots itty-bitty .22 caliber) was nicknamed "the Meat Axe." People survive gunshot wounds all the time (now), but frequently lose the use of limbs or major muscles...or have to have their wife get into the shower with them, and take out their intestine and wash it so it doesn't get infected while they heal.

Yeah, that really happened to the husband of one of my mom's friends after he got gut-shot (he's a cop).

If you want guns in your story, you damn well better make it a story where people die, because that's what guns (also swords) do. You want your hero not to kill people? Fine (though I think you're a sissy); give him/her/it/Mokona nonlethal weapons. Jutte, for instance (Japanese cops' truncheons). Otherwise, man up and show your hero coming to grips, like a grownup, with spilling the blood of other people.

A final, irksome point: for some weird reason, people in manga who follow this nonsense, are frequently supposed to be following the path of Yagyû Munenori's Life-giving Sword (I think Kaoru in Kenshin is, though I've never paid much attention to that overrated series).

But, uh, gee, the whole point of Life-Giving Sword is that, by killing evil men, you give life to the thousands they would harm.

Those who take up arms when this is necessary, are also following the Way of Heaven. If you ask me why this is so, I reply that flowers and greenery bloom among the spring breezes, but they wither and fall in the frosts of autumn.

But then, I've actually read Munenori.