California Switchblade Law

 Knife Rights v. Bonta (9th Cir. 2026). This being the 9th Circuit, they upheld California's ban on concealed carry of switchblade knives. I am disappointed that I was not asked to provide expert declarations or rebut the other side's expert declarations. I am not sure how much difference it would have made. At the core of this decision is the concept of how and why:

In assessing whether a law is "relevantly similar under the Second Amendment," courts are instructed to compare modern and historical regulations in terms of "how and why the regulations burden a law-abiding citizen's right to armed self-defense."...

Other states and territories continued to adopt concealed carry restrictions on Bowie knives and other dangerous knives and weapons during and after the Civil War. These states punished unlawful concealed carry with imprisonment, fines, or both.^[10] In addition, the record includes prohibitions on the concealed carry of knives from several cities in the post-Civil War period.^[11]

The record also includes evidence as to why jurisdictions prohibited the concealed carry of Bowie knives and other knives. One of California's experts, Dr. Robert Spitzer, explained that "Bowie knives were widely used in fights and duels," and were known to be "fighting knives" intended for "[interpersonal] combat." Another expert, Dr. Brennan Rivas, explained that "[a]s rates of violence rose during the nineteenth century, people were more likely to carry and use large knives; the increased presence of knives . . . had the regrettable consequence of exacerbating the problem." This problem was "especially notable in southern areas, where Bowie knives were quite common and known to be associated with needless bloodshed." 

The problem here is why those laws were adopted. The decision acknowledges that these laws adopted in the 1950s because of criminal use.(Perhaps largely in West Side Story.) The why for the antebellum period was not members of the criminal class but the people who would become legislators, judges, and militia officers. My book Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic examines this odd situation in more detail.

 

There Must be a Comedy With a Line for This Story

6/27/25 BBC:

"People who own ninja swords are being urged to hand them into police stations across West Yorkshire as part of month-long amnesty.

"Running from 1 to 31 July, the scheme aims to help take the deadly weapons off the streets before new legislation banning them comes into force.

"People who legally own a ninja sword can surrender them at one of five police stations in the county and in some cases may be able to claim compensation."

I do not doubt the article's claim that ninja swords are used in criminal attacks.  Odd they did not list any, however.  

For Americans, are these protected by the Second Amendment?  Under the self-defense understanding articulated in Heller, yes.  But under the Insurrection understanding articulated by the Framers?  Probably not. Knives make sense for self-defense: I am not persuaded they have a value for overthrowing a tyrannical government,  unless it is also limited to contact weapons.  Feel free to construct your alternate reality world where the American government relies on swordsmen to impose its will on us.

Work Cited in a Knife Self-Defense Case

CARLOS LORENZO GONZALEZ, Appellant,
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA, Appellee.

Case No. 6D23-509.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Sixth District.

The defendant argued successfully that the trial court erred in failing to give his claim of self-defense proper consideration.  The case cites DC v. Heller (2008) for the right to armed self-defense of one's home and a law review article by Dave Kopel, Joe Olson and myself about how arms are protected by the Second Amendment.

Reading the appellate court decision, I find it entirely plausible that the defendant was engaged in lawful defense of his home against a guy with a BAC of .335%.

How Do You Know If Your Knife Is Legal?

From Copeland v. Vance, 230 F. Supp. 3d 232(SDN.Y. 2017:

To meet the first statutory requirement of the Gravity Knife Law, it is clear that a knife need not open by both gravity and the application of centrifugal force; if a knife opens by centrifugal force alone and the blade locks in place once released, the knife is an illegal gravity knife. ...

For instance, during questioning regarding Native Leather his deposition, plaintiffs asked D.A. Rather: "And did you ever have the circumstance arise where a knife passed the functional test with one person, but failed it with another?" (Rather Dep. 43:15-17.) D.A. Rather responded: "In a fashion. Gravity knives by law don't have to open each and every time. . . ." 

The Stone Age Exemption

Federal law largely exempts pre-1898 firearms from regulation, on the grounds that these are antique weapons, and not terribly useful to a criminal.  This is a bit of an overstatement, but you have to draw a line somewhere between modern weapons and antique weapons. 

In the course of my research into knives and the Second Amendment, I found a discussion in David Wong's Knife Laws of the Fifty States of Mich. Comp. Laws sec. 750.222a, which defines a "double-edged, nonfolding stabbing instrument" but does not include "a knife, tool, implement, arrowhead, or artifact manufactured from stone by means of conchoidal fracturing."