Didn’t want you writer folks to miss out on this article by Massad Ayoob over at GunDigest.com, The Dangerous Myth of Hierarchy of Lethality. Ayoob, one of the world’s foremost authorities on firearms and self-defense, details the situations where a firearm is not the most deadly weapon on the scene. Although his article his aimed at the gun crowd, there’s plenty in here to think about for writing.
For example:
A full-size automobile traveling fifty miles an hour generates approximately half a million foot-pounds of energy. Far from being unarmed, the violent man who turns his automobile into a guided missile has armed himself with the most crushingly powerful of bludgeons.
And:
A knife never jams. A knife never runs out of ammunition; you rarely see a gunshot murder victim who has been shot more than a few times, but any homicide investigator can tell you how common it is for the victim of a knife murder to bear twenty, thirty, or more stab and/or slash wounds. “A knife comes with a built-in silencer.”
The Writer's Guide to Weapons 