The bit that got me was the first bit of evidence the article provides. "This would be a bad weapon of war because [I can't imagine it being good]". I've seen a

The bit that got me was the first bit of evidence the article provides. "This would be a bad weapon of war because [I can't imagine it being good]". I've seen a few modern people say that X would have not been used in the past 'because it's not tenable', despite X actually known to have being used in the past. Quite often it's amateur military historians making this claim. A common variant of this 'imagination' error is most of the esoteric stuff that is attributed to the katana, for example. Finding few mentions in the literature or the examples you can examine being decorative rather than functional are better arguments (though not necessarily definitive, as you say).