Technology!

[the AJman]

In terms of stopping power a sword way out classes a gun. One little hole compared to slicing you in half, not to mention the impulse you have to stop to block a sword is WAY higher than that of a gun.
The reason we use guns is because both will kill you, and a gun has a way longer range. If you could survive gun hits/block bullets then swords would be much higher up on the range of effective weapons.

Depends on the caliber of the fire arm your using. If your talking a .22 against a claymore or something than you might have a point. However, I can guarantee that almost anyone getting hit with something like a .45 is either going to get knock off their feet, stopped in their tracks, or killed out right. Fire arms have pretty darn good stopping power, otherwise they wouldn't be used.

As for the little hole compared to a body being cut in half, your giving two extremes for examples. Thats like comparing a stab wound from a rapier to a gunshot wound from a barret .50 sniper rifle.

And despite popular belief cutting through human bone is not that easy to do let alone cutting some one completely in half especially when they are wearing armor.

Despite how much I hate to say this (I'm a full blown sword fanatic) we use guns over swords because the fact of the matter is guns are much better weapons than swords.

Talking about gunshot wounds reminds me of the scene in The Last Samurai at the beginning when Tom Cruiz's character has a drunken lapse in sanity.

*Tom loading a rifle and looks down a confused child*
"Son, have you ever seen what this could do to a man"
*Confused kid shakes his head no*
"This would blow a hole in your daddy six inches wide"
*Lady in crowd turns her head in disgust*
"Thats right, missy"
*Then Cruiz winks at her after he made the comment*

I don't know why, but always liked that scene for some reason.