Duarh

Because of what the person said in the original posting - that, by not learning weapons, you would only be learning taijutsu, not aikido. If you define aikido as an art that includes weapons, OF COURSE you need to study weapons to become good at aikido (duh). If you define it as an art that consists of general movement/control/etc principles, weapons training might not be absolutely necessary.

I DO think weapons training is very beneficial - I just think you can learn aikido under the latter definition without it.