heavymetalfan872 said
In John 18:10, Simon Peter draws his sword and severs a slave’s ear to defend Jesus. This is a bit puzzling, because I imagine that the Roman authorities would not have wanted Jewish peasants possessing deadly weapons. Would Peter have acquired it illegally? Did he even have a sword at all? Is this implying that Peter had dissident affiliations?
I can’t help but wonder if this story is a later addition, since it seems to conflict with the background of Jesus’s early followers.
  

A brief google search suggests that the primary Roman restrictions on carrying of sidearms by freeman was in the city of Rome and the surrounding territory that formed the heart of the Roman republic, rather than out in the provinces … the area famously bounded to the north by the Rubicon (rules which Julius Caesar made so famous by violating them), which is what later on made the preferences of the Praetorian Guard so famously importance in determining some Imperial successions.