Dear friends of myArmoury.com:

I am writing this topic in hoping to acquire some information on gifting a sword. I understand that this might be an akward question, but it is to my understanding that a sword is a weapon and can be dangerous. Now my friend is interested in learning the German longsword, so I decided to give him a longsword waster and an actual longsword (unsharpened with 1mm edge) alone with a learning lesson DVD. My question is that should I write a wavier/disclaimer to relieve myself of any future liability? Thank you for replying.

Sincerely
Edward
7/5/2013

This sounds odd to me, but then again might be a cultural thing - Germany isn't quite as fast to sue someone.

If your friend is legally an adult - 18+ years - I don't see how anyone could see it as your fault if he does something stupid and breaks something - or worse, someone, including himself.
Especially since you are talking about training tools, ask yourself would you add such a waiver for a baseball bat? You can do a lot of bad things with a bat, including hurting yourself or others.

Obviously things look different if he isn't of legal age, in that case I'd check the whole thing with his legal guardian/his parents to make sure they are on board, after all it would be their responsibility if something happened.

Personally I'd feel somewhat offended if I got a training-weapon with a waiver that excluded the person giving it to me from any blame. Not only the assumption that there would be cause for blame (sure something may always happen, but that's not really a thought I want to have pushed down my throat on receiving a gift) but also the idea of blaming them for a gift I got feels very weird to me.

Thank you for replying Mr.C.S

What I originally meant is that my friend is also from NY, and he wanted to learn German longsword, but he is not from Germany. The training tool I mentioned is only part of the gift I will send for him, the other part however is a longsword just not sharpened to the point to perform a cut.

It must be a cultural difference because I'm wasn't born in the US, so I wasn't sure if this is a case where I can be sued for giving someone something that might hurt them, but yes you have a very good point and suggestion, thank you.

P.S and he is older than me, 25 ish

Personally, I wouldn't worry about it.

Thank you all for the replies.

i think this would be different it your friend was 'buying' the items from you.

as a gift, i don't think you can run into any problems. depending on what state you live in you can gift firearms between people with relatively no paper work - only time that i know of when paper work is involved is with a hand gun - or ownership of the firearm is moved between states. so a sword i don't see any problems with.