Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-24218038-20131202202153/@comment-10380701-20131210043424

There's a clear difference in beating the shit out of a human and a Grimm.

For a person, they can withstand it, since they have Aura. A point-black shotgun punch would hurt as hell, but it's not enough to kill. Hell, Junior withstood a full-powered Yang punch and the worst that happened is he got knocked the hell out.

Ruby didn't stab anyone. The mook got slammed in the ground. If that mook got stabbed, a noticeable "stabbing" sound should've occurred.

Grimm, are effectively jello and are considered less like animals and more like the enemy of mankind. Fictionland dictates that the less human a monster is, the more it's okay to kill them, which is why Ruby can perform Grimm genocide and still remain innocent.

They generally aren't gonna fight humans, with certain exceptions, so most of their weapons are designed to kill Grimm. So far, Team RWBY faught humans under rare circumstances. Ruby protected a Dust Shop, Yang got a bit heated and tore down Junior's Club, and Blake was stopping Roman's operation.