What are the Dumbest Weapons?

This goofy mall ninja shit
- oh it's a little sharky

Gonna defend the nunchuks, they're basically just a flail, you can hit with a lot of force without feeling recoil through your hand because of the chain, and nunchuks have roughly the length of a shortstaff at full range, but foldable because it's segmented.
If you actually wanted to fuck somebody up with nunckuks, there's no need for the elaborate moves they do in exhibition nunchuk competitions, you would just swing that shit at full extension towards somebody's head or legs. And, as somebody who has dicked around with practice nunchuks for fun, it's not hard to avoid hitting yourself if you keep it simple, follow Dusty Rhodes' rule "do not do shit you do not know how to do."
I'll recommend checking out a youtube called "Jesse Enkamp" who's a karate guy and explains the history of it in one of his videos, if anyone is interested. (this is not an endorsement of their other content, which I have not viewed or vetted)
EDIT: to answer the question, those self-defense spike things. Like yes you could hurt a person with them, but practically a crenelated flashlight does the same shit, but is also a flashlight, making it more practical and less embarrassing to carry with you.
- (this is not an endorsement of their other content, which I have not viewed or vetted)
  He's sensationalist and a bit unscrupulous.
  He visited Steven seagal and validated his obviously fraudulent martial arts record. He's also argued that Mike Tyson uses karate.
  He does have great knowledge of the history of karate tho.
  I say this as someone who has watched a ton of his stuff lol
- Yah nunchucks are basically double-sided flails. They can wrap around your opponent's blocks, too. You lift your sword up to block a downward strike from a nunchuck, you're still getting hit in the face.
  The self-defense spikes always look like shitty stilettos to me. I wouldn't want to get hit in the face by one, but I'd probably laugh my ass off if someone threatened me with one. Some sufferagette time traveler pulls a foot-long stiletto out of her hair? Yah I'm about to get stabbed so I wouldn't fuck with that.
  
  if you have a sword why are you parrying blows with a dude with nunchucks lol. Just slice the guy directly. So what if you get whacked for it, you win that trade
- there is a nice scene in one of the John Wick movies where Wick shows off some practical nunchuk work. The nunchuks themselves had of course come from a display case.
- Flails also suck and weren't really used that much historically if at all

Hey, I'm not abiding by nunchuck slander. They were invented by okinawan peasants who were barred from owning weapons by their samurai occupiers, so they made all sorts of makeshift weapons instead, such as the nunchuck being derived from an agricultural flail. Is it the ideal weapon? No, but you had to use what you could when a samurai could legally kill a peasant without consequences
- Honestly improvised peasant weapons go hard AF, a while ago I had this cool idea for a hammer/sickle symbol for the Hussites that's a crossed threshing flail and a straightened scythe (how peasants would rotate the blade 90 degrees to make a glaive). Maybe making the sign of the cross because of the Hussite's "heretical" Christian beliefs.
- Pitchfork

Let me introduce you to US Patent #1183492A Albert Pratt's Helmet Gun.
- OK, I think you cam take the prize
  
  I mean there is a helmet that's even stupider, or perhaps just more tragic.
  WARNING: Extremely NSFL - features a device built for self-harm.
- I like how it has a spike on top so you can do a running headbutt if the gun misses

My vote is for early chemical weapons (like the kind they pumped out via hoses) because the wind would change and they'd poison their own guys. A liability that big is it's own kind of stupid.

Those guns where it's just five barrels all pointing in different directions
Like, you shoot once and maybe hit one of the line of guys charging at you
But then his four friends are pissed
- How dare you.
- I think the idea of was being damn sure you'd kill one guy. Guns were bad at aim and sometimes just didn't feel like firing back then. Having 5 meant at least something should hit whar it was meant to
  
  This is why pirates had the right idea
  Carry 8 regular guns instead
- They're kind of designed for a very specific niche, particularly in 18th century naval combat where you want to fill a narrow space with multiple shots and the heavy smoke from the powder prior to attempting to board so that the defenders either get hit, take cover, can't see for the smoke or are disorientated by the noise.

Modern weaponry? FASCAM (Family of Scatterable Mines). Effectively a "minefield in a can" where each mine is launched from a tube that has a little computer brain in it that is supposed to have a timer that tells it to detonate after so many hours.
Good idea right? Forces can quickly drop some area denial minefields over square miles in a matter of hours instead of the days it took with with hand emplacing that will explode themselves instead of needing to be removed by hand. But with all the points of failure in computery devices... internal battery failure, failure to communicate between the brain box and the mines before deployment, the mine canisters getting really hot making the solder on the mines' circuit boards getting soft enough that things break loose when hitting the ground nothing about these things seems to be a "good idea."
Wind up having to manually proof minefields anyways AND you've got WAY less idea where the fucking things landed than with hand emplacements.
Oh... and the antipersonnel mines that are mixed in with the antivehicle/tank mines try to throw out trip wires when they are dropped. Making an already fucking terrible weapon that causes terrible situations even more terrible.
- I don't know much about mines but with like gps and drones and shit, wouldn't mines that don't do anything until someone sets em off remotely work pretty good? You'd need a guy watching the mines for the right people to blow up pass by if they do but they pay people to watch monitors all the time anyway
  
  (been a bit since I checked my replies)
  I don't know much about mines but with like gps and drones and shit, wouldn't mines that don't do anything until someone sets em off remotely work pretty good?
  That's just a command detonation explosive then. The purpose of large belts of landmines as in (100 meter long by 50 meter wide belts that will have hundreds of mines) are meant to be seen by opposing forces to stop or turn their path of travel where artillery, airstrikes and ambushes can do the work. That a mine in a belt knocks out a vehicle or kills personnel is a secondary purpose.

If it counts, my pick is railway artillery guns. They're super impractical and inaccurate, and extremely vulnerable to being attacked and disabled. They use way too many resources for the impact they have. But on the other hand I absolutely understand why they were built, because man has always wondered: "what if we just make the gun bigger?"
- They seem fun

The users probably said skill issue but it never looked like a good idea to me
- Yeah but consider that they were commonly used on horseback. They didn't even need to swing it that hard to wipe out someone on foot. It's like a mega clothesline.
  
  I think there's debate about whether a ball on chain flail was ever actually designed used as a serious weapon in the middle ages. We know straight length weapons like morningstars, war hammers and maces were and peasants used threshing flails in revolts.
  But there's not many archaeological examples of non ceremonial or farming flails. Like a flail designed for fighting. There's drawing in marginalia but they also draw dick trees and rabbits fighting snails.
  Most evidence we have is mounted knights would use lances first, as they were longest but also easily lost or broken, then swords as they still had decent reach if you're riding by someone, and maces if you got scrunched together against other cavalry, for short range and armour piercing.
  
  I didn't know that. I had heard that it was mostly used as bludgeoning weapon. It always seemed like something unsafe to use that could come back at you in unexpected ways when I imagine someone using it but I guess armor must help even if it did?

The keyblade
- This!!!! HOLY SHIT I HATE KEY BLADES!!
  They are not blades! They are just big keys you fuckers! You are beating each other up with large, badly weighted clubs! Stop calling them blades! STOP!!

Damn, I was going to say nunchuks too. Why would you use a weapon where getting hit in the face with your own nunchuk is a staple in slapstick comedy?

The Apache Revolver.
Looks cool as hell, but it notably lacks a safety catch or sights.
- Isn't the whole idea that it's something you stick in someone's rids during a bar fight and then can use as a knife after?

Every single bladed weapon you can buy in a mall.
- what if it has a dragon on the blade
  
  Especially if it has a dragon on the blade
- Too bad my country does not have weapons in malls. Well maybe the gardening aisle of the supermarket

tacticool lever guns
like I really can't picture a situation where having a lever action with a bunch of pic rail attachments isn't either goofy overkill or you're in a situation where a semi auto with all the same attachments would be massively more practical
- sometimes those are for complying with state laws.

I've got the urge to make a ur mum joke, but I'll refrain.
I think a lot of tactical nuclear weapons are kinda dumb. Things like the Davy Crockett or nuclear artillery seem to put your own troops at significant risk, and it's also an easy path to escalation.

any weapon that was likely not used as an actual warfighting weapon and is now relegated to mall-ninja cool shit like meteor hammers lmao
- I feel like meteor hammers could work as a thrown weapon, wind them up sort of like a sling and it could do some serious damage. Probably not a great thing to do though, because your enemy can just pick it up and throw it back. Plus they'd probably be way too expensive to make as a "one and done" kind of weapon like that.
  
  Hear me out: if you block it on the rope, you're going to get tied up. The end is also flying fast enough to fuck someone up. It's also long range while fitting in a pocket.
  Counterpoint: High skill (more than nunchuk). What if the opponent also is skilled with the hammer? Couldn't they send it back directly at you in an unpredictable way?
  
  Build a trebuchet

I watch short videos of this girl who uses anything as a throwing weapon and every time she throws she says biu~~~ (usually she's throwing pins) so. Some of those are dumb (a leaf??? A playing card? Like I know gambit is cool and all and on some level everyone thinks they can probably throw cards if they practiced but you gotta admit it's goofy).
So I'm gunna go with some of the things that she throws to give some variety compared to the nunchuck answers (which ai agree with). The other things she throws like ice daggers are unreservedly cool though.
- Shuriken and kunai are pretty cool though. They are effectively construction hardware and tools altered to be used as concealable weaponry.

I really don't get how these weird sheet metal swords are supposed to be useful in combat. Okay so I can inflict nasty cuts on my opponent? And myself? Also just seems like they'd get caught around things and break.
- The guy doing the demo is really feeling himself. Mall ninjas are everywhere i swear.
  
  Yeah it's really not exclusively an anglo thing. All cultures have mall ninjas.
- I remember the deadliest warrior episode with one of those and it seemed like high risk little reward. I feel like the flexibility would fuck up how deep it can cut and deadliest warrior showed that to be true.

Jet fighter.

I would have said meteor hammer, but I saw a demo of that shit by an actual pro and it was pretty amazing. Now I want a rock on a rope, but I have no skills so I'd just get myself killed faster than screwing with a lightsaber.