Disunited: Are Our States Moving In Separate Directions

[General Mung Beans]

http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics ... --20110722

Disunited: Are Our States Moving in Separate Directions?
Legislatures in red and blue states are enacting very different kinds of laws. Is that for the good?

By Ronald Brownstein and Scott Bland
Updated: July 22, 2011 | 5:13 p.m.


At times, the past six months in the imposing state Capitol building in Indianapolis has seemed more like a track meet than a typical legislative session.

After the 2010 election expanded Indiana Republicans’ control of the state Senate and provided them a majority in the state House, GOP lawmakers joined with Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels to briskly advance a long list of conservative priorities. Together they adopted tough measures on illegal immigration (including legislation similar to Arizona’s controversial enforcement bill); expanded the school-voucher program; limited collective bargaining by teachers; and overrode local restrictions that prevent gun owners from carrying their weapons in many public buildings. To much fanfare, Republicans defunded Planned Parenthood and enacted a raft of constraints on abortion, including a ban on the procedure after 20 weeks of pregnancy—a provision that critics say violates the constitutional right to abortion that the Supreme Court established under Roe v. Wade in 1973.


Two hundred miles to the west, in Springfield, Ill., the Legislature has marched, nearly as rapidly, in the opposite direction. Illinois Democrats have moved aggressively to leverage a 2010 election that maintained their party’s control of the state House and Senate and installed Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn for a full term. While devising a budget to salve the desperate fiscal condition, Illinois Democrats made permanent the state’s longtime moratorium on the death penalty. Quinn withdrew Illinois from a controversial federal illegal-immigration enforcement plan championed by President Obama, and signed a law that provides undocumented immigrants in-state higher-education benefits, including tax-advantaged savings. In January, the governor approved a civil-union bill that provides same-sex couples spousal rights equivalent to those of heterosexual couples. “It was,” Democratic state Rep. Greg Harris said with studied understatement, “a good year.”

These Midwestern neighbors aren’t the only states taking separate paths through what has become a busy, even landmark, year for state legislative action. Across an array of issues, red and blue states are pulling apart.

This process isn’t exactly parallel: Energized by their big 2010 wins, red-state Republicans have generally moved more boldly than blue-state Democrats to redirect state policy. But on both sides of the political divide, leaders in many states this year tilted away from the cautious centrism that often shaped the strategies of governors and legislators in earlier times. The result has been a banner legislative year for both gay-rights advocates and abortion opponents. Along the way, the ideological and partisan polarization that defines contemporary Washington increasingly appears to be infusing debates—and driving results—in state capitals as well.


State of Play

“It is a time for extreme views,” said Richard Nathan, former director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York in Albany, which studies state-level policy. “My recollection of government is that there are times when people work things out, compromise, bargain to get consensus. But there doesn’t seem to be much consensus-seeking [now] at the state level.”

There’s nothing new about states charting distinct pathways. Many thinkers have long championed the idea of states as “laboratories of democracy” that provide a testing ground for competing ideas. And some leaders in both parties agree that our federal system benefits from a built-in escape valve allowing states to craft responses to national controversies that reflect local majorities. But this year’s flurry of legislative activity is testing the limits of that theory by dramatically widening the gap between policies in blue and red states on polarizing issues such as abortion, gay rights, and immigration.

As so many states go their separate ways, no one can say for sure where exactly the line falls between variation that eases political tension and dissonance that intensifies it. “My own [instinct] is toward letting the states decide these things, because having national solutions imposed usually doesn’t solve the problem, and it keeps the pot boiling,” says Peter Wehner, a former senior adviser in the George W. Bush White House. “But at some point, you get people in different states pushing so many diverse laws with so many diverse views, it makes us less united as a country. All things being equal, we’d rather have the bandwidth narrower than wider.”

FEDERALISM OR FRAGMENTATION?

The contrast this year between red and blue states is most apparent on what might be called discretionary policies. On the biggest challenge facing state governments—budgets squeezed by the lingering economic slowdown—Democratic and Republican governors have displayed a surprising degree of strategic convergence. Generally speaking, states on both sides of the political divide have moved to close budget deficits by cutting spending rather than raising revenue (with Illinois as a notable exception). Even Democrats Jerry Brown in California and Andrew Cuomo in New York, presiding over the bicoastal two towers of blue America, have pursued givebacks from public employees.

Still, differences are apparent even on the fiscal front. Although both Democratic and Republican governors have sought budget concessions from state employees, many GOP governors and legislatures have gone a long step further by also seeking to curtail the bargaining power of the public-employee unions. Thirteen states—almost all of which have Republican governors and legislatures, and most with a strong history of backing the GOP’s presidential candidates—have pursued such limits this year. No state in which Democrats control the governorship and legislature has imposed such limits on public-employee unions.

Attempts to limit public workers’ bargaining rights have generated the most heated conflicts in state policy this year. But the pulling apart across the states is even more vivid on social issues such as abortion and gay rights. Despite the GOP’s huge state-level gains in the 2010 election that netted almost 700 state legislative seats, 2011 witnessed astounding successes in the expansion of gay marriage and civil unions, with five solidly Democratic states enacting legal recognition for gay couples. On the other side of the ledger, 15 mostly Republican-leaning states have moved sharply to restrict abortion rights. Illegal immigration has exposed the same centrifugal current: 15 mostly Republican-leaning states have adopted one or more tough new enforcement measures, while five blue states have either withdrawn from federal enforcement efforts or provided in-state tuition to the children of those here illegally. Red and blue states are also going in different directions on gun control and their response to President Obama’s health care reform law.

At some level, this patchwork of divergent approaches is exactly what the nation’s Founders intended when they established a federalist system that maintains substantial authority for the states (and rejected James Madison’s hope of a congressional veto over state actions).

Particularly on divisive social issues, some liberal and conservative thinkers have long argued that providing states more flexibility to set rules that reflect local mores could drain some of the venom from intractable national debates. Wehner, now a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, argues that the unending generation-long controversy over the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion shows the cost of imposing a single national solution on divisive cultural questions. On gay marriage, he maintains, the nation would be better served by allowing states to go their own way rather than attempting to either guarantee or ban equal treatment through the courts or a federal constitutional amendment. “To have same-sex marriage now decided at a state level, and different state levels, makes the culture wars less heated than they otherwise would be,” Wehner says.

In the 2008 Republican presidential primary campaign, Rudy Giuliani, attempting to temper conservatives’ skepticism about his liberal social views, argued for allowing states more leeway to pursue their own course on social issues. If Texas Gov. Rick Perry seeks the nomination in 2012, he may use comparable arguments to soften resistance among more-moderate GOP primary voters to his staunchly conservative social views. From the other side of the ideological spectrum, Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University, has contended that returning control over abortion to the states by overturning Roe v. Wade would allow the nation to reach a “democratic equilibrium” on the perennial dispute.

Bruce Cain, a University of California (Berkeley) political scientist, agrees with Wehner that many Americans will probably welcome the trend toward diverging state policies. “We are a divided country, and if we were all mixed in one state, we’d be fighting to a standstill,” Cain said. “It may be a way of diffusing the tension somewhat to allow states to have different paths, and then people can choose to live in a state or not.”

As states pull apart, though, it raises questions of how far they can extend flexibility without either undermining nationally guaranteed rights or simply producing an unworkable jumble of cacophonous directives. After all, for decades, state-sponsored segregation was defended as an expression of distinctive Southern mores and preferences. Only decisive national action, first from the Supreme Court through the Brown v. Board of Education decision and then Congress through the 1964 Civil Rights Act, dismantled Jim Crow and ensured African-Americans that they would possess (if not always be able to exercise) equal rights in every state. The Roe decision did the same thing for women on abortion, overriding discordant state laws that permitted or prohibited the procedure.

The aggressive laws that states passed this year, particularly on abortion and illegal immigration, will likely keep federal courts busy for years determining whether they infringe on federal law or constitutional rights. Nathan, the scholar on state policy, believes that the deeper problem with the centrifugal movement isn’t so much legal as political: He sees the trend as reflecting a rising absolutist strain in American politics in which the majority party, no matter how narrow its advantage, pursues a winner-take-all agenda, at the national and the state level, that offers few concessions to opponents’ views. “You could argue that [this trend amounts] to reconciling diversity,” he says. “But I wouldn’t, because I think there’s a churning hardball-politics process at work within both the red and blue states. It doesn’t pretend that you’re going to have a consensus on the social issues or the role of government through deal-making or bargaining.”

It’s possible that the powerful centrifugal force evident this year in the states will prove a temporary surge driven mostly by the historic GOP gains in 2010. But other factors indicate that it could endure.

One reason is that so many states now lean reliably and durably toward one party or the other as Americans arrange themselves in their housing patterns along cultural, ideological, and partisan lines. Bill Bishop, the Texas-based coauthor of the acclaimed 2008 book The Big Sort, which chronicled the increasing tendency of like-minded Americans to flock together, says that the clustering phenomenon creates communities in which converging viewpoints encourage policies that tilt sharply left or right. Increasingly, he contends, the same dynamic is affecting states. “If you look at them, a lot of the states are tipping too,” he says. “And as these places begin to tip, their policies reflect more of the direction they are tipping toward. You saw that initially locally.… Now, as states begin to tip, you see those kinds of [dynamics] carrying over.”

Another factor is that state politics no longer are as resistant as they once were to the polarization and reflexive partisanship that characterizes Washington. Even as national politics grew more divided after the 1960s, governors often prided themselves on functioning as nonpartisan, pragmatic problem-solvers. The National Governors Association cherished its ability to produce bipartisan proposals for almost every challenge.

That has grown much more difficult to do, as governors (and state legislators) divide along party lines as reliably as their congressional counterparts do on issues such as climate change, immigration, or Obama’s health care law. The divergence evident this year among red and blue states is not so much a cause of our divisions as a reflection of the fact that no level of American politics remains immune to them. Allowing local majorities to follow increasingly inimical paths may indeed produce more “democratic equilibrium,” but at the price of institutionalizing the deepening divisions between these ostensibly United States.

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Eh. Federalism at work here. It is a good thing I would say that we can see many suggested laws in microcosm and that states adopt laws appropriate for their settings and to their population.

[Lonestar]

Seriously man, is there a reason why you couldn't spend 30 seconds to clear out all the random links that take up a 1/3 of the quote at the top?

[Mr. Coffee]

Seriously man, is there a reason why you couldn't spend 30 seconds to clear out all the random links that take up a 1/3 of the quote at the top?

Survey saaaays... He's an asshole!

[LadyTevar]

I cleaned it up for him, but he needs to start doing that himself.

[Simon_Jester]

What worries me is the gridlock at the federal level, and the growing hazard of state laws that infringe on Constitutional rights slipping by the Supreme Court and thus further undermining our rights.

[ComradeClaus]

Mmmm, that article show everything I hate about both main parties.

Why can't their be a party that has only the good of both? Tax The Rich; let lawabiding citizens play w/ their machine guns (legal w/ proper licence); allow abortion & planned parenthood; Fry serial killers in the electric chair (saves money by freeing up prison space); give FULL rights to LGBT citizens; let people keep their GTA & mortal Kombat. & lewgalize drugs & free healthcare (Switzerland destroyed the illegal drug trade in their country & reduced the prostitution rate by giving drugs to addicts in special clinics. If America did that, it'd save billions of dollars & "win" the drug war)

But such a party is just a dream that will never be realized.

[Irbis]

So, were back to that old 'Jesusland vs United States of Canada' map?

Why can't their be a party that has only the good of both? Tax The Rich; let lawabiding citizens play w/ their machine guns (legal w/ proper licence); allow abortion & planned parenthood; Fry serial killers in the electric chair (saves money by freeing up prison space); give FULL rights to LGBT citizens; let people keep their GTA & mortal Kombat. & lewgalize drugs & free healthcare (Switzerland destroyed the illegal drug trade in their country & reduced the prostitution rate by giving drugs to addicts in special clinics. If America did that, it'd save billions of dollars & "win" the drug war)

Because such a party must have been more schizophrenic than Jack the Ripper on drugs?

Also, while I do agree with some of the postulates here, some are utterly disgusting

[cosmicalstorm]

Ever since I was taught basic American history in highschool I've wondered what North America would have looked like if the (warning: generalization ahead) rich and educated northern states had entered their own union and not bothered with the problematic southern states, and instead just kept them as a neighboring country.

[Simon_Jester]

In the 1780s this was simply not in the cards- also, the states actually had more in common then than they did after the industrial revolution started to kick in in the north.

The easiest-to-visualize outcome is that of the US simply saying "Fine. Go away, and don't let the door hit you on the way out" to the seceding Confederate states in 1860-61. This was, realistically, not in the cards, but it's at least conceivable.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

So, were back to that old 'Jesusland vs United States of Canada' map?

Why can't their be a party that has only the good of both? Tax The Rich; let lawabiding citizens play w/ their machine guns (legal w/ proper licence); allow abortion & planned parenthood; Fry serial killers in the electric chair (saves money by freeing up prison space); give FULL rights to LGBT citizens; let people keep their GTA & mortal Kombat. & lewgalize drugs & free healthcare (Switzerland destroyed the illegal drug trade in their country & reduced the prostitution rate by giving drugs to addicts in special clinics. If America did that, it'd save billions of dollars & "win" the drug war)

Because such a party must have been more schizophrenic than Jack the Ripper on drugs?

Also, while I do agree with some of the postulates here, some are utterly disgusting

What's "utterly disgusting" in there? The only thing I see that I think is bad is the death penalty part, and even that's debatable.

[Irbis]

What's "utterly disgusting" in there? The only thing I see that I think is bad is the death penalty part, and even that's debatable.

A) Death penalty to save money

B) Letting citizens play with machine guns

There are countries in the world where you need the same permit to own a gun and 20 kg of TNT, that is, where gun owning is almost impossible, and where (surprise!) crime rates are lowest in the world.

On the other hand, we have Iraq, Somalia, Northern Mexico - and USA, with its (by far) highest crime rate of all developed countries, and even these nutjobs don't have free access to real, automatic machine guns.

Thanks but no thanks.

Yes, I'm aware this view is somewhat simplified. Please feel free to rectify it by any way but of second amendment one.

[Losonti Tokash]

Here are some occasions where it is morally acceptable to kill a defenseless human being:
1)

I feel that this is an exhaustive list, thanks for reading.

[HMS Sophia]

Here are some occasions where it is morally acceptable to kill a defenseless human being:

1) When that person is in immense pain or suffering, and needs assistance in ending their own lives.

[Losonti Tokash]

Shit, you're right. I forgot to equate capital punishment with assisted suicide.

[HMS Sophia]

Shit, you're right. I forgot to equate capital punishment with assisted suicide.

Qualify you're statements
Seriously though, I commented without keeping the frame of reference in mind. sorry.

[Irbis]

Here are some occasions where it is morally acceptable to kill a defenseless human being:

1) When that person is in immense pain or suffering, and needs assistance in ending their own lives.

Wouldn't that technically be killing of someone not 'helpless', just choosing to exercise their right to not defend himself/herself?

So, Tokash can still be right

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

What's "utterly disgusting" in there? The only thing I see that I think is bad is the death penalty part, and even that's debatable.

A) Death penalty to save money

B) Letting citizens play with machine guns

There are countries in the world where you need the same permit to own a gun and 20 kg of TNT, that is, where gun owning is almost impossible, and where (surprise!) crime rates are lowest in the world.

On the other hand, we have Iraq, Somalia, Northern Mexico - and USA, with its (by far) highest crime rate of all developed countries, and even these nutjobs don't have free access to real, automatic machine guns.

Thanks but no thanks.

Yes, I'm aware this view is somewhat simplified. Please feel free to rectify it by any way but of second amendment one.

Do you have any idea when the last time a crime was committed in the U.S. with a legally bought machine gun or SMG? I'm pretty sure it was during Prohibition, Sea Skimmer or someone probably has better information on it than I do. Basicly, I think that if someone can pass the license requirements, they should be able to own the weapon. Do the license requirements need tweaked? Maybe, I'm no expert, but I'm sure there's room for improvement that doesn't amount "guns are EVIL, lets ban them." Furthermore, there are other countries than the U.S. where the citizens have access to plenty of firearms, Finland, Switzerland, and Canada, for example, and they don't have the U.S.'s crime rate, so maybe, just maybe, the guns aren't the problem.

[Irbis]

and even these nutjobs don't have free access to real, automatic machine guns.

Do you have any idea when the last time a crime was committed in the U.S. with a legally bought machine gun or SMG? I'm pretty sure it was during Prohibition, Sea Skimmer or someone probably has better information on it than I do.

Please read the bolded part. I very specifically stated that crime rate is enough of a problem even without free access to it. This means, uh, you repeated what I wrote. Only attacking me with it.

Basicly, I think that if someone can pass the license requirements, they should be able to own the weapon. Do the license requirements need tweaked? Maybe, I'm no expert, but I'm sure there's room for improvement that doesn't amount "guns are EVIL, lets ban them."

Why not? If fucking fertilizer is heavily regulated, tracked, and specifically corrupted to make it worse weapon, I don't see why real weapons can't get the same treatment, especially seeing they don't serve any useful purpose - besides dick enlargement - in most civilized countries. Oh, and fueling, like in US, the unbreakable circle of buying more guns to defend yourself from previously sold (in massive quantities) guns, yeah.

Note that full ban isn't exactly my first proposal, in some cases they can be useful tool, but a law like, in Singapore, with licenses and all? Sure. But no fucking "playing" with real machine guns

Furthermore, there are other countries than the U.S. where the citizens have access to plenty of firearms, Finland, Switzerland, and Canada, for example, and they don't have the U.S.'s crime rate, so maybe, just maybe, the guns aren't the problem.

Yes, yes, heard that before. Finland - does this ring any bell? Or this? And these are only the most famous cases. Swiss? You mean, in tiny country where said guns are free, and part of every male being trained for war, and having access to one? Gee, maybe in such situation the guns would be safe. Except, care to give us some stats about (both non- and malicious) gun accidents in Switzerland? Would 100 people dead each year from gun accidents justify... what exactly? "Security" from Liechtenstein? Would 10?

No, in my opinion, even 1 person dead to guns is case enough to regulate them heavily, especially with modern, safe state.

To give you counterexample - my University had a madman enter the library with intent of killing everyone - and he would have succeeded, too, because it was old, unsafe soviet building with one exit and barred widows. Had he had gun, the is, as our horrible strict gun laws only gave him access to knife. He managed to wound grand total of one student before few others bludgeoned him into submission with chairs. Had he had gun, 200+ people would be in danger, instead, he become local accident no one ever heard about.

Let me ask you, what he would have carried past the guard he deceived to kill on the island had he couldn't buy a gun? Bowie knife?

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

No, in my opinion, even 1 person dead to guns is case enough to regulate them heavily, especially with modern, safe state.

So, do you extend this opinion to cars? Tobacco? Alcohol? Knives? Step-ladders? They all kill more than one person a year.

Note, I don't think someone should be able to just walk down to Wal-Mart and buy an Uzi, no questions asked. I'm totally fine with requiring background and psychological tests and extensive safety courses as part of the licensing proscess. Which, as I understand it, is already pretty strict in regards to SMGs and the like.

As for Breivik, if he couldn't get a gun, I'm sure he would have found some other way to spread carnage, probably involving the rest of the three tons of fertilizer he bought.

[Irbis]

No, in my opinion, even 1 person dead to guns is case enough to regulate them heavily, especially with modern, safe state.

So, do you extend this opinion to cars? Tobacco? Alcohol? Knives? Step-ladders? They all kill more than one person a year.

Ah, so we quietly move over all issues I pointed out, folding on all the quiet-y points. Good.

Now, to move to NRA argument #513 - what about cars?! I'll only point that all these things have enormous importance to society's wellbeing, and unlike guns, they can't be rid of safely and quietly. The only thing on that list, both almost useless and dangerous to others, tobacco? Sure, ban it, like the rest of the drugs, giving free doses to help hopeless addicts only. Alcohol? Ban any dangerous activity, like car driving, but as reports to its health benefits are contradictory, I'd be willing to give it benefit of the doubt, seeing it might be beneficial in small doses, though ban the cheapest, worst kinds made only to get drunk cheaply. Knives? Useful tools, though I'd ban all these fancy 'combat' ones. In other words, I'd use the things actual harm/benefit ratio to determine that. And things that exist solely to kill/maim people place low on that.

So, using that as a guide, what can you exactly put on the other end of the scale weighting usefulness of guns? On one side, countless dead people, massive up-arming of police, costs, less safety... What can you put on the other end, justifying all these tragedies? If something, like an exotic vegetable, caused as many deaths as guns, it would have been long banned.

As for Breivik, if he couldn't get a gun, I'm sure he would have found some other way to spread carnage, probably involving the rest of the three tons of fertilizer he bought.

Except, he didn't have big car, so it was all he could transfer. Even if he did one, compare the effect of his bomb to his gun shooting, heck, compare London bombings - they killed far less people than gun in his hand, despite multiple well prepared terrorists doing it. Compare that to Bombay shooting, or to Bieslan - massive casualties, despite less resources used than in any of above bomb attacks. Nope, guns in determined hands easily kill more people than even big bombs, seeing how little 'benefit' doubling the mass of the bomb gives in blast radius increase.

And that is assuming he could have carried his plan with big truck, cars are much less conspicuous, it's quite possible someone would have stopped him. I'd really like to live in the world where misuse of fertilizer is our biggest problem, anyway.

[Mr. Coffee]

Please read the bolded part. I very specifically stated that crime rate is enough of a problem even without free access to it. This means, uh, you repeated what I wrote. Only attacking me with it.

What free access is there for automatic weapons in the US? I'm going to assume you're talking out of your ass here, kid, because in order to legally obtain a fully automatic weapon in the US you have to first find a weapon that meets NFA requirments, then you have to pass a fairly lengthy background check, pay a title transfer fee, and then you're looking at anywhere from $2000.00 allthe way up and above $200,000.00 depending of the fire arm you're trying to purchase. Access to fully automatic weapons in the US is anything but free.

Why not? If fucking fertilizer is heavily regulated, tracked, and specifically corrupted to make it worse weapon, I don't see why real weapons can't get the same treatment, especially seeing they don't serve any useful purpose - besides dick enlargement - in most civilized countries. Oh, and fueling, like in US, the unbreakable circle of buying more guns to defend yourself from previously sold (in massive quantities) guns, yeah.

They do get the same treatment as explosives and destructive devices under the NFA. If you had any goddamned idea what you were talking about here you'd know it, but instead you're just another ignorant assclown talking completely out of his backside liek a knee-jerking cunt. I'm not even going to bother with the rest of your tired bullshit, because if the above is any indication trying to decipher your shitposting could result in me becoming permanently retarded.

[TimothyC]

So, using that as a guide, what can you exactly put on the other end of the scale weighting usefulness of guns? On one side, countless dead people, massive up-arming of police, costs, less safety... What can you put on the other end, justifying all these tragedies? If something, like an exotic vegetable, caused as many deaths as guns, it would have been long banned.

1. Hunting - people do hunt you know, some rely on it for sustenance.
2. Self defense - I don't personally own one, but I know people who do. At least one of whom has received death threats for totally legal actions that angered some people. Would you deny them the right to defend themselves?

[General Mung Beans]

I cleaned it up for him, but he needs to start doing that himself.

Sorry, will.

[Mr. Coffee]

So, using that as a guide, what can you exactly put on the other end of the scale weighting usefulness of guns? On one side, countless dead people, massive up-arming of police, costs, less safety... What can you put on the other end, justifying all these tragedies? If something, like an exotic vegetable, caused as many deaths as guns, it would have been long banned.

1. Hunting - people do hunt you know, some rely on it for sustenance.
2. Self defense - I don't personally own one, but I know people who do. At least one of whom has received death threats for totally legal actions that angered some people. Would you deny them the right to defend themselves?

You forgot fun. Seriously, mag dumping a fully automatic weapon is nearly orgasmic in the sheer level of catharsis you can let loose. It gets even better with belt fed weapons, and your only limitation is money as despite what fuck-o there thinks, the care and feeding of an automatic weapon is expensive as fuck. Don't believe3 me? Go find the average cost for 5.56x45mm or 7.62x51mm NATO in your area then multiply that by how much fun you plan on having. The cost of ammo alone puts automatic weapons out of most people's price range by itself, never mind all the bullshit associated with acquiring the weapon in the first place.

[Maelstrom]

Knives? Useful tools, though I'd ban all these fancy 'combat' ones.

Ok, I was gonna stay out of this one and then I read this and my brain nearly exploded. We're gonna start penalizing people with a few extra bones lying around that want a Strider? I'm reasonably certain that most knife related assaults in this country, and likely elsewhere, are committed by jackasses who happen to grab whatever bit of cutlery happens to be lying around at the time they decide someone needs shanked. And just in terms of damage, a quality chef's knife in the hands of an enraged individual is going to make me shit myself as much as if the individual were wielding something by Reeve or Strider.

And while I'm at it, I just want to reiterate for some of the less informed, non-US members, it is not easy to acquire a fully auto weapon in the US. There's an asston of paperwork, background checks, and licensure to go through, you have to contact you're local sheriff (or whomever is the highest ranking local law enforcement agency, notifying them of what you're doing), and to top it all off, the weapon has to have been licensed prior to 1986. Given the whole supply and demand thing, even a relatively shitty old M16 could cost well north of 10k. Oh, and the ATF can come to your door whenever they please, more or less, and demand you present said weapon, to insure you are still in possession of it. And, as others have pointed out, ammo is NOT cheap. Even a day at the range with an AR15 doing some casual plinking can put one in the hole hundreds of dollars.