“They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon.”
Ok, let’s try a little logic here. You ban the steak knives, and what happens in the next “impulse” situation? Do they look for a weapon of opportunity, find no steak knife, and then decide they’d better settle their dispute without violence? Or is it more likely that they will just grab a cricket bat, a beer bottle, or a claw hammer that is laying around, instead of the steak knife which isn’t?
All you’ve got to do is watch a Jackie Chan movie to learn that nearly anything can be turned into a deadly weapon, if someone wants to use it as such. We can’t possibly ban the “all too available” weapons that surround us.
Perhaps we ought to wait and see what China does about knives first. Our school massacre was done with guns. The Chinese were the ones who had a knife-wielding assailant storm into the classroom (and on the same day as the Newtown tragedy).