I think most would agree that with everything else switchblade enforcement is somewhat at the bottom of the list for the most part, allso most laws as far as I know were made in the 50s and with what is being sold out there [ other then switchblades] the laws are somewhat out of date.
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Auto knife laws
- Thread starter Rob 67
- Start date
Are you saying the laws should be discarded as obsolete, made wider-ranging to criminalize a greater variety of modern knives (such as assisted-openers), or just ignored by the average person who would never commit a crime but wants to carry an automatic knife?
The laws never made any sense except that they were a political response to a panic created in parents in the 1950s by a series of Hollywood films beginning with "Blackboard Jungle" that showed "juvenile delinquents" using those cheaply made junk Italian stiletto style switchblades. The movies made the knives "the weapon that would end society as we know it" for a great many parents trying to understand the teenaged kids in the late 1950s. The switchblade was only the first in a series of movie-hyped "weapons that would end society as we know it". Then came the kung fu "chop sockey" flicks of the 1970s and 1980s which led to the outlawing of nunchakus, bali-songs, and many other such martial arts types of weapons. Then came the whole Hollywood gang war type films of the late 1980s and since that portray every shooting as happening with fully automatic weapons, leading the the panic over "assault weapons"(sic). The fear is all from Hollywood hype and never was based in any reality.
FullerH said:
This has been going on for a lot longer than the 1950's. I have it on good authority that the ministers of Europe in the 1500s banned certain classes of weapons following the production of a certain Shakespeare play (currently almost unknown) aptly titled "Blood and Guts Crossbow Lung Puncture Killers".
Well, Bowie knives were banned in most of the Southern and old Southwestern states during the 1840s -1860s, based almost entirely on news stories of the horrific duels fought with them. It is illegal, for instance, to carry a Bowie Knife in Texas, where Jim Bowie died for Texan freedom or in Arkansas and Louisiana, the two states that can make the most supportable claims for originating the Bowie knife. In Virginia and Maryland, Bowie Knives are classed as dangerous weapons and may not be carried concealed, nor may they be carried openly with the intent to do bodily harm to anyone. The question of doing bodily harm in self-defense is somewhat up in the air, but would probably be more liberally interpreted in Virginia than in Maryland and probably more liberally interpreted in the more rural portions of those states than in the more urban portions.