Re: little girl with big bayonet...
...it seems to me that while little girls shouldn't have to engage in that worst kind of combat, they may, on the very personal level, at some point be obligated to fight... fight dirty to win... to save their own lives or the lives of related people. Goblins don't seem to mind preying on little girls any more than they mind preying on the rest of the population. So the reverse, that little girls need to know how to defend their lives in the absense of adult "good guys", is also true. If it requires a rifle, so be it. If it requires that big pigsticker, so be it. If it were my daughter who had to deal with the gravest extreme in my absense, I'd rather have her home alive than have to go through her funeral because she didn't know how to defend herself. I'm not saying she has to be sinister; just that I'd rather she were a survivor.