BUT, us peasants were allowed to own knives. And there were many regulations regarding the difference between knives and swords, which was important because people would make very large knives that were still totally counting as knives and not as swords, to get around such arming laws. We were also allowed to own a variety of farming tools, some of which are basically blades on the ends of sticks anyway, so turning them into weapons was easy.
Fun fact, knives and farming implements were often better against nobles than swords, at least once plate mail became the norm for them.
But yes, swords were the weapon of the ruling class, thus received a much better PR than spears or axes, thus they became the "cool" weapon.
