Massachusetts Court Strikes Down Ban on Switchblades

A Massachusetts court struck down a 67-year-old ban on switchblades on Tuesday.

The 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, which stated that citizens have a right to carry firearms in public for self-defense, was applied to Tuesday’s ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The judicial court decided that switchblades do not need special restrictions under the Second Amendment.

“Nothing about the physical qualities of switchblades suggests they are uniquely dangerous,” Justice Serge Georges Jr. wrote in the ruling.

Therefore, Massachusetts residents are now allowed to arm themselves with switchblades.

Tuesday’s ruling stems from a case involving a domestic disturbance from 2020 in which police seized a firearm-shaped knife with a spring-assisted blade. The defendant, charged with carrying a dangerous weapon, appealed the case, claiming that the weapon was protected under the Second Amendment.

The judicial court reviewed the history of knives and pocket knives from colonial times within the U.S. Supreme Court’s guidance to determine whether weapon restrictions are consistent with the United States’ “historical tradition” of arms regulation.

Georges concluded that spring-loaded knives are “arms” under the Second Amendment, writing in the ruling: “Therefore, the carrying of switchblades is presumptively protected by the plain text of the Second Amendment.”

Meanwhile, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell criticized the ruling, calling switchblades “dangerous.”

“This case demonstrates the difficult position that the Supreme Court has put our state courts in with the Bruen decision, and I’m disappointed in today’s result,” Campbell said in a statement. “The fact is that switchblade knives are dangerous weapons and the Legislature made a commonsense decision to pass a law prohibiting people from carrying them.”

The Bruen decision sparked several lawsuits challenging federal and state gun regulations, including a lawsuit filed earlier this year by the Gun Owners of America (GOA) and the Gun Owners Foundation (GOF) that argued New York’s gun laws stripped nonresidents of their Second Amendment rights.

Subsequently, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) adopted an emergency rule earlier this month that will allow nonresidents to apply for concealed carry permits through the city.

Meanwhile, a California federal judge struck down a state law banning the possession of club-like weapons, ruling that the law “unconstitutionally infringes the Second Amendment rights of American citizens” last February.

There is also a pending case in Hawaii, in which a federal court found the state’s ban on butterfly knives unconstitutional.

This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.