User blog comment:Goddess of Despair/Thoughts on the First Episode of RWBY and Stuff/@comment-9090085-20130723033432/@comment-9090085-20130724210837

Fair enough, but then again, she isn't a warrior now, just one in training; can't rule out that she will mature later in the series.

The "weirdness" just so happens to be one of the things I like about this series: weapons shouldn't logically work yet are used believably, "magic" and "technology" co-existing (and/or  intertwined), blatant anime physics and so forth. See, I am driven to see things largely by curiosity, so something with an unusual premise or that uses aspects that aren't usually found together interest me greatly.

They were probably trained to fight monsters first, humans second; so learning to use lethal weapons non-lethally was probably a necessity. In all fairness, it is weird... and, counter-intuitively, par for the course in fiction.