With An AXE?

Seymour Hersh's most recent article in the New Yorker is about Israeli efforts to establish a presence in the Kurdish regions of Iraq. But it also contains this exciting detail about Iyad Allawi, soon to be our head puppet in Baghdad:

Allawi moved to London in 1971, ostensibly to continue his medical education; there he was in charge of the European operations of the Baath Party organization and the local activities of the Mukhabarat, its intelligence agency, until 1975... At some point, for reasons that are not clear, Allawi fell from favor, and the Baathists organized a series of attempts on his life. The third attempt, by an axe-wielding assassin who broke into his home near London in 1978, resulted in a year-long hospital stay.

Now, I'm not a professional assassin. (It's really more of a hobby.) But it seems to me that, while you obviously can kill someone with an axe, it really shouldn't be your first choice when breaking into your target's house in the middle of the night. In fact, it should be one of your last choices.

Not your LAST choice, of course. There are still a few weapons that would be either more cumbersome, less likely to kill, or both:

1. a large fork
2. an electric chainsaw powered by two AA batteries
3. a small, wheeled cannon
4. 100 spiders (if target is scared of spiders and might have heart attack)
5. a boombox playing a tape with subliminal hints target should kill himself with an axe