Law review article about knives and the Second Amendment

[Erich]

I ran across this today on The Volokh Conspiracy blog, and feel that it is really worth a read for folks interested in knife law. :


Knives and the Second Amendment

David B. Kopel Independence Institute; Denver University - Sturm College of Law
Clayton E. Cramer College of Western Idaho
Joseph Olson Hamline University - School of Law

March 22, 2013 University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, Forthcoming

Abstract:
This Article is the first scholarly analysis of knives and the Second Amendment. Knives are clearly among the “arms” which are protected by the Second Amendment. Under the Supreme Court’s standard in District of Columbia v. Heller, knives are Second Amendment “arms” because they are “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes,” including self-defense.

Bans of knives which open in a convenient way (bans on switchblades, gravity knives, and butterfly knives) are unconstitutional. Likewise unconstitutional are bans on folding knives which, after being opened, have a safety lock to prevent inadvertent closure.

Prohibitions on the carrying of knives in general, or of particular knives, are unconstitutional. There is no knife which is more dangerous than a modern handgun; to the contrary, knives are much less dangerous. Therefore, restrictions on the carrying of handguns set the upper limit for restrictions on knife carrying.

There is a draft available for free download at:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2238223

Enjoy!

 

[Erich]

The final bit of the article:

This Article has not aimed to resolve definitively every question about knife laws in the United States. Rather, we have endeavored to provide a starting point for further study, to examine some of the prohibitions which may be most clearly unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. In a practical sense, the most frequent way that Americans exercise their Second Amendment rights is by owning and carrying knives. Knife rights are worthy of judicial protection and of further scholarly study.

 

[Critter]

This is a great start on the sort of scholarly work that needs doing to further potential legal cases down the road.

Just a note of caution, for those unfamiliar with the process. This is the initial submission draft of this article. It will now go through an exhaustive peer review and editing process. Revisions will be posted during that process. Only after that entire process has been completed will the final version of the article be published. So, just to reiterate, this article is not published at this point and should not be relied upon for any legal effort, nor should it be assumed to be entirely correct in all aspects at this point.

 

[ThePerpetualNovice]

Interesting reading. It is funny that the fact that I tend to consider a knife first and foremost as a tool actually cuts against its protection under the Second Amendment.

DC v. Heller was a real triumph for the Second Amendment and gun ownership, but there has been obviously considerable push-back recently and the Second Amendment itself seems under attack. Supporting knife preemption laws at the state level has never been more important. With the left trying to eat away at our existing rights, creating an extra level of protection for knife users seems like the wisest course of action. Plus it avoids the byzantine complex arbitrary, contradictory, and often nonsensical restrictions that are frequently imposed at the local level (examples of which can be found in the article).

So thank you Doug Ritter, KnifeRights, the paper's authors, and everyone else who is willing to speak up in support of their rights and the rights of others. While it looks like the preemption bill failed here in Florida its first time out, that is no reason to stop trying.