Why the paranoia over nunchakus?
I never quite understood the authorities' paranoia over nunchakus. Nunchakus were banned in Britain. Nunchakus were quickly banned by the state government in California shortly after the movie. I might be willing to blame wannabee martial artists, who helped hype the nunchaku as the ultimate weapon, because, "IT COULD GENERATE 1,600-lbs PER SQUARE INCH ON IMPACT!" This kind of nonsense hype frightened the government authorities into thinking the nunchaku was the weapon of mass destruction. The ban still holds in California.
The nunchaku was simply a farm implement known as a flail, invented all over the world to thresh grain and rice. Even the Europeans used the nunchaku, a larger version of it, back in the Middle Ages, to thresh grain. True, medieval European peasant soldiers used the flail just as Okinawan farmer fighters. But it wasn't because they thought the flail was the ultimate weapon. It was all they had!
Had the flail been the ultimate weapon, everyone would have been using it. But it wasn't because there were far more lethal hand weapons available.
Also, the Okinawan nunchaku flail wasn't necessarily the version used by Bruce Lee, with the long chain. Okinawan flails typically used a very short, thick rope cord to attach the two wooden handles, and may have only been about one inch or so length between the handles.