Switchblades are now legal to carry in Massachusetts because a state law banning them violates the right to keep and bear arms, the state’s highest court said.
Gun-rights decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court in recent years that confirm an individual right to keep and bear arms also apply to knives, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court found in a decision issued Tuesday.
The state court vacated a man’s conditional plea to a charge of carrying a dangerous weapon, and also declared unconstitutional a portion of a state statute that bans carrying “any … switch knife, or any knife having an automatic spring release device by which the blade is released from the handle, having a blade of over one and one-half inches.”
The state enacted the ban in August 1957, at a time when many states were enacting comparable laws.
“However, these laws were first enacted in response to sensationalized portrayals of switchblades as weapons solely intended for criminality,” the state Supreme Judicial Court said in its decision, citing a 2013 law review article.
Instead, the Massachusetts high court relied on standards the U.S. Supreme Court has established during the past two decades – that individuals have a right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and that any ban on them must, in the state court’s words, be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of arms regulation.”
The state Supreme Judicial Court cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, which offers guidance for how to interpret the Second Amendment to the federal constitution, which states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Prosecutors in the Massachusetts case didn’t show that a switchblade is particularly dangerous among weapons, the Massachusetts court said.
“The Commonwealth has not presented any evidence as to why a spring-operated mechanism that allows users to open switchblades with one hand makes switchblades uniquely dangerous when compared to a broader category of manual folding pocketknives,” the state Supreme Judicial Court said.
It’s not enough to show that switchblades are dangerous, the court said, because every weapon is.
“In the most basic sense, all weapons are ‘dangerous’ because they are designed for the purpose of bodily assault or defense,” the state Supreme Judicial Court said. “… As such, general dangerousness of a weapon is irrelevant where the weapon belongs to a class of arms commonly used for self-defense. … Consequently, spring-loaded folding knives cannot be categorically prohibited just because they are, in everyday terms, ‘dangerous.’ At the very least, for purposes of this analysis, ‘dangerous’ weapons must feature uniquely dangerous qualities that are disproportionate to their use for self-defense.”
In addition, the court said, various knives similar to modern switchblades were legal at the time the Second Amendment to the federal constitution was adopted in 1791.
Background
The case stems from a dispute between a man and his girlfriend at 49 Temple Place in Boston, not far from Boston Common, shortly after 4 a.m. Friday, July 3, 2020.
Boston police responded, and found a man and a woman having an argument while apparently under the influence of alcohol. The woman told police that her boyfriend had taken her cell phone and wouldn’t give it back. Two witnesses told police that the man at one pojnt grabbed his girlfriend and pushed her against a wall.
Police frisked the man and found a switchblade in his waistband. He was arrested and charged with domestic violence and carrying a dangerous weapon. (Police said they had no evidence that Canjura either used or brandished the knife in the incident.)
Prosecutors later moved to dismiss the domestic violence charge.
As to the dangerous-weapon charge, Canjura initially claimed that state law that made carrying the switchblade illegal is unconstitutional, but the Boston Municipal Court judge ruled against that argument. Canjura subsequently admitted to sufficient facts, which in Massachusetts is a lesser plea short of a guilty plea that nevertheless acknowledges that prosecutors have enough evidence to convict. The judge continued the case without a finding for six months, conditioned on the defendant’s appeal to a higher court to dismiss the case.
The state Supreme Judicial Court agreed to hear the appeal directly.
Advocates Celebrate
Knife Rights, an organization that advocates for “the right to own, use and carry knives and edged tools,” celebrated the Massachusetts court’s decision Tuesday.
“It is extremely gratifying to see this switchblade ban struck down on Second Amendment grounds in one of the most notoriously anti-Second Amendment states,” said Doug Ritter, chairman of Knife Rights, in a written statement.
Knife Rights submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, arguing that “firearms and cutting weapons were ubiquitous in the colonial era” and that “The historical record up to 1800 provides no support for general prohibitions on any type of arms or armor.”
The state Supreme Judicial Court noted in a footnote in its ruling that it applies only to switchblades, and not to other types of knives prohibited by state law. Knife Rights noted in its written statement that stilettos, daggers, dirks, and double-edged-bladed knives remain banned in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office also submitted a friend-of-the-court brief, which argued that in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Bruen the state Supreme Judicial Court should send the case back to the trial court to allow time for prosecutors “to demonstrate, through evidentiary submissions or identification of analogous historical regulations, all of which requires time and research,” that the state law prohibiting switchblades “is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of weapons regulation.”
The state Supreme Judicial Court rejected that idea, noting that prosecutors to date have “failed to identify a single on point historical analogue” that would show that switchblades were illegal “from the time of the founding, or at least the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified” in 1866.
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