According to the CDC, that's not highly probable, and simple cleaning measures should take care of most of that:
Is that a risk you're willing to take? Not me!
And yet they're still readily available.
But not socially accepted outside of special cases.
Hardly. You can buy them in CVS, for goodness' sake!
And I can buy a gun at Wal-Mart.
EDIT: Whoops! Almost forgot my argument winning anecdote (jk, of course)! My dad once had the police called on him because someone thought he was carrying a gun. The 'gun' was a walking stick and, oddly enough, the place where he was carrying it was alsoi a place where carrying a gun is legal. The cops
still showed up ... and apologized for inconveniencing my dad. Anyhoo, as I said, 'weapon-y'.
The real thing is that canes are physically awkward. They take up your hand. If you lean them up against a wall or something to free up your hand, they fall over. If you need one to give you extra balance or support in walking, of course you use one, but otherwise, they're kind of a pain in the neck.
Plus, unless your in some rather formal clothes, they look silly. They don't fit into an informal-dress world.
Yeah, it's mostly their impracticality. Unless you need one, the pain in the rear outweighs the slick, fashionable look.
Plus I really don't think that the majority of folks would be comfortable if the youth of today decided to bring back canes. A quintet of rakishly dressed high schoolers twirling canes down the street after dark would probably not be met terribly well. I would guess that most schools wouldn't be too happy with a fashion statement of that nature either. Weapon-y.
I know.
Thats why I wish they were in fashion so I can unconspicuously weaponize.
(bear in mind, I've actually trained in cane and jo stick fighting).
I think there was actually a french martial art involving canes. Those guys actually have a few martial arts that nobody knows about.
Most of the cool cane weapons are illegal.
By that I mean 'illegal to actually carry'. You can buy 'em all day long, you just can't use 'em. Sounds insane, I know, but weapons have a lot of silly rules. For example: In my state I could buy a 40 round or bigger AR15 magazine and keep it perfectly legally. The moment I put it into my AR, though, I'd be breaking the law. For some reason, the state, in its infinite wisdom, decided to make magazines with a capacity greater than 31 rounds (on per day for the longest months? I really don't know) legal for use
only in NFA registered weapons. So what that means is that I could buy a 40 round mag and keep it so long as I never, ever load it and put it into my 16" barreled standard AR15. My friend, otoh, can buy one, load it and put it into his 10" barreled NFA registered (SBR) AR15 rifle. But that's not silly. Not at all. Anyhoo, yeah, cane swords and the like are often perfectly legal to own and yet totally illegal to carry or - especially - use.
And yeah, the French have some decent martial arts. It's ... odd.