By 200 A.D., Chinese scholars had already created the 50,000-kanji prototype for the modern written languages of China and Japan. Many Sino-Japanese characters still in use today feature components picturing objects from everyday life in ancient China, including weapons for battling other humans or confronting wild animals.
The Chinese did not discover gunpowder until 800 A.D., which helps to explain why kanji components picture weapons more primitive than bullets and guns. By a long shot, the "spear" (戈) is the most commonly used weapon-component in general-use kanji. 戈, written with four strokes, is an elaboration of the three-stroked component 弋, which pictures a "stake" seen, for example, in 代 (DAI, generation) and 式 (SHIKI, ceremony). To distinguish between 戈 and 弋, think of the former as a stake adorned with a military tassel.
戈 appears on the right side of kanji, as in 戦 (SEN, war), 賊 (ZOKU, bandit), and 裁 (saba-ku, judge). It is found in both the top-right (e.g., in 惑, mado-u, "be confused,") and bottom-right (e.g., in 義, "righteousness," GI) positions.